How To Set Up a Chatbot For Real Estate Brokerages: A Step-by-Step Guide

Most brokers assume setting up a chatbot is a weeks-long project: building conversation trees, scripting qualification logic, writing every possible response from scratch.

With Madison, our flagship AI chatbot, none of that is true.

The setup is five steps and takes about 15 minutes as Madison is already trained for real estate before you even log in.

How To Set Up Madison on Your Brokerage Website

Here's the complete walkthrough. There's no separate configuration phase after this, no flow builder to learn, and no FAQ library to manually populate.

Everything below can be done in a single sitting.

Step 1: Paste the Embed Code on Your Website

After signing up for Madison, you'll receive a short embed code snippet via email.

Paste it into your website's header or body, either inside your CMS (Webflow, WordPress, Squarespace) or hand it to a web developer with one instruction: "Add this to the site header."

We also have custom configuration to support the major real estate website providers such as

• BoldTrail (KvCore)
• Lofty
• INCOM
• Sierra Interactive
• MoxiWorks

That's the only moment in the entire setup that touches code.

You can add Madison to all of your websites so you can maintain the same brand presence and engagement across your entire digital presence.

Step 2: Confirm Madison Appears on Your Site

Once the embed code is live, reload your brokerage website and look for the Madison chat widget in the lower corner of the page. She will automatically open up to greet you.

When you can see it, Madison is technically live. The integrations and brand settings aren't configured yet, but the chatbot is already running on your site.

At this point you only really need to add an email and phone number to receive leads. Outside of this everything is completely optional.

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Step 3: Connect Your CRM, Phone Numbers, Emails, and Calendar

This is where Madison connects to the tools your team already uses. Here's what to configure:

• Calendar Link: If you decide to your calendar link which could be either (Google Calendar, Outlook, or Calendly), this will allow visitors to book showings directly in the chat.

• CRM Connection (Follow Up Boss, KVCore, Sierra Interactive and others): Every lead Madison captures flows directly into your CRM with the full conversation transcript attached. No manual data entry is required. This is by design to prevent lead details slipping between your website and your agents' workflows. ‍

• Phone Connection: This allows you to add different phone numbers that will receive a text notification when a new lead is captured.

• Email Notifications: This allows you to add different emails that will receive noficiations when a new lead is captured.

If you book a demo with us we can handle this setup for you

Step 4: Configure Your Brand Settings

This is where Madison stops looking like a third-party widget and starts looking like part of your team. For a brokerage, these settings matter more than they do for a solo agent: the chatbot is the first impression for every visitor across every page of your site.

Configure the following:

• Chat Button Color: Control the color of the button to reflect your brand color palette.
• Profile image or logo: Upload your brokerage logo or a custom avatar image for the chat widget.
• Avatar name: Most brokerages name the chatbot after their brand identity. This could be a member of your team or a separate name.
• Opening message: Write the first thing a buyer or seller sees when they land on your site. Keep it simple and professional such as ‍"Hi! My name is Alex from [Brokerage Name], how can I assist you?" works well. Keep it friendly and professional.‍
• Conversation Starters: These are different questions that visitors can click to start a conversation to initiate a flow that the AI will nurture. This can help with user self identification.‍
• Popup timing: Set how many seconds after a visitor lands on the page before the chat widget opens automatically as well as the number of times that the chat widget opens.‍
• Page placement: Left or right side of the screen. Right side is standard and matches visitor expectations.

Step 5: Add Additional Website Context and URLs

The final step is pointing Madison to your existing site content so it can answer visitor questions accurately.

Add the URLs of your key pages: listings, neighborhood guides, agent bios, market reports, and your about page. Madison reads these automatically to build its knowledge base. You don't write a single FAQ response yourself.

This is what lets Madison answer questions about specific listings, your service area, and individual agents without you having to load anything manually. Adding a handful of URLs takes five minutes, and Madison does the rest.

• Website URLs: Allows you to add specific webpages that can directly provide context on a specific area of your business that is consistently referenced.
• Additional Context: Allows you to add specific flows for your business, additional business specializations such as luxury, downsizing, waterfront, and references to content on your website.

We handle this during our setup when you book a demo

What Madison Handles Without Any Extra Setup From You

Here's what separates Madison from a generic chatbot tool: the parts that take the most time to build are already done.

With a generic platform, you'd spend weeks configuring the logic that Madison ships with out of the box.

Conversation Flows for Buyers and Sellers: Already Built In

Madison ships with separate, pre-trained conversation paths for buyers and sellers. A buyer flow that asks about location, budget, pre-approval status, and timeline. A seller flow that covers property address, condition, property details and listing timeline.

You don't build any of it.

She also handles the edge cases out of the box: visitors who go off-script, visitors who don't fit neatly into buyer or seller categories, and visitors who want to speak to a person immediately.

You never have to script those scenarios yourself.

With a generic platform, getting to this point takes weeks and costs more than most brokers expect:

• Unpredictable cloud costs. If you're self-hosting or on usage-based infrastructure, a spike in traffic, a viral listing, or a busy open house weekend can send your monthly bill two or three times over budget with no warning.
• Spam eats your quota. Chatbot widgets are easy targets. Bots, trolls, and repeat spammers flood your widget with junk conversations that burn through your usage allowance without generating a single real lead. On a per-message or per-conversation model, you're paying for every one of them.
• Maintenance falls on whoever built it. Every change to your team or site means someone has to go back into the flow builder and fix something. If that person leaves, the institutional knowledge goes with them.

With Madison, none of that applies. The flows are pre-built, the hosting is handled, and there's no infrastructure to maintain.

Lead Qualification and Human Handoff: Handled Automatically

Madison asks qualifying questions based on what the visitor actually wants, scoring the lead before it ever reaches an agent.

Here's what gets captured from every conversation:

• Buyer intent or seller intent: Madison identifies which type of lead it's talking to and routes the conversation accordingly.
• Timeline: When is the visitor looking to buy or sell? This week, within 90 days, just browsing?
• Budget: What price range are they working with?
• Property preferences: Location, property type, number of bedrooms, must-haves.
• Contact information: Name, email, and phone number, collected naturally inside the conversation.

All of it lands in your CRM with the full context, before anyone on your team ever gets involved.

Madison recognizes when a conversation needs a real person, whether that's a complex negotiation question, an emotional situation, or a direct request to speak with an agent, and routes it immediately with everything the agent needs to continue the conversation.

Getting Your Agents on Board

Getting Madison live is only half the job. The other half is making sure your agents actually work the leads it generates.

The fastest way to get buy-in isn't a team meeting or a slide deck.

It's this: have one agent test Madison on the site themselves, then pull up the first few leads that come through and compare them side by side with your existing form submissions.

The difference is obvious the moment they see it.

A form lead is a name and an email. A Madison lead is a full conversation: buying/selling timeline stated, neighborhood preference given, budget on the table.

From there, the play is simple:

• Let the leads prove it. On average we see 5-7 new leads per month but depending on your website traffic this could be easily 20-40 leads.
• Share the first win fast. The first showing booked overnight, the first deal that traces back to a chatbot conversation: make it visible to the whole team the moment it happens. One real win creates more momentum than any amount of explaining.

For the practical ways real estate teams are already using AI, the pattern holds every time: show the team the lead quality firsthand, share the first win fast, and the skepticism disappears.

Measuring Results After Madison Goes Live

Madison's dashboard gives you three numbers front and center. They're simple, and they tell you everything you need to know.

• Number of Contacts: Contacts collected with full contact info, captured directly from conversations. This is your primary ROI number.
• Total Conversations: Every conversation a visitor started with Madison on your site. Compare conversations to contacts to get your capture rate.
• Time Saved: Hours Madison handled that would otherwise require agent or admin time.

While most agents work directly out of their CRM, our dashboard is simple and shows you the most important data.

Your Brokerage Website Is Already Getting Traffic. Madison Makes Sure It Converts.

You've invested in your brand, your IDX, your marketing, and your online presence. All of that effort exists to bring people to your website.

The only question is whether they leave or become leads.

Madison is an answer to your conversion problem, and the setup is faster and simpler than most brokers expect because the hard parts are already done for you.

If you're ready to stop losing leads after hours and secure an addition 20-40 qualified leads book a demo with our team today.