283 Home Builder AI-Powered Customer Service - James Matte Aug 27 2025

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us on the show, James Matte. James is the CEO and Co-founder of BuilderChat. Welcome, James. Thanks for being with us today.

James Matte: Yeah, you're welcome, Greg. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me, Kevin and Greg. It's great to be here.

Greg Bray: So, James, let's just start off, give us that quick background overview about yourself so we get to know you a little bit better.

James Matte: Sure. So, I've been in [00:01:00] the building industry for a little over 20 years. Got started on the tools, actually, and worked my way into estimating and project management. I was the partner in a contracting company for close to a decade, and also spent about seven years selling new homes, so.

Kevin Weitzel: You've literally been in the trenches on multiple fronts. That's a good thing. Before we get started on anymore of that, James, let's find out some personal tidbit about you that has nothing to do with work, family, or the industry as a whole.

James Matte: Okay, sure. I guess something that I never post about and I would think nobody really knows about me is I do practice martial arts regularly, focusing on Taekwondo today until I achieve black belt status, so.

Kevin Weitzel: That's cool.

Greg Bray: Are you close?

James Matte: No.

Greg Bray: How long is that journey from zero to Black Belt?

James Matte: It really depends on how much you apply yourself. I predict it'll probably take me about [00:02:00] another year or year and a half. You know, I have to say, for anybody, if you're looking for a very humbling experience, join a martial art as a novice. There's nothing more humbling than testing for your next belt level with a bunch of six and seven-year-olds.

Kevin Weitzel: So, you know, it's funny you mention that because Seinfeld did a thing where Kramer went into a karate studio, and he had to do like a head-to-head matchup against some small kid, and he just was rifling through kids one right after another.

James Matte: Yeah, totally. So, yeah, I guess depending on if you're sparring with children, that might actually be a little bit of an ego boost rather than humbling, so.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, James, tell us a little bit more about BuilderChat, kind of the background of the company, what you guys are working on, and how you're serving home builders.

James Matte: Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Greg. So, what BuilderChat specializes in is helping home builders engage buyers and serve clients 24/7 without learning new tech, hiring more staff, or [00:03:00] increasing their workload. So, that includes custom design, prospect facing, sales assistance, or a digital OSC, if you prefer. That helps lower your cost per lead and increase website conversions. We can also help with the warranty and service side of things, giving you the ability to serve homeowners 24/7 as well.

So, kind of a little bit of an interesting journey. When I was first exposed to the concept of like a digital OSC or OSC or live chat solution on a home builder website, I was managing sales and marketing for a builder, and it was right when COVID hit. So, up in Canada, it was very scary, very intense. We got hit with like basically a hundred percent lockdown for a while, and I had 100% of my pipeline dry up.

You know, one of the things that was interesting for us is we still noticed a high level of traffic on our website, but nobody was getting in touch. So, you know, we were kind of exploring different ways [00:04:00] to engage website visitors and get conversations going. So, we settled on testing out a live chat solution that we originally staffed with foreign workers. This introduced a whole other problem set, you know, language barriers, reliability, training, turnover, things like this. You know, in frustration, I often joked back then that, Hey, one day hopefully we can do this with AI, and flash forward a few years, and here we are. So, yeah, that's kind of a little bit of a background and outline of what we do.

Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this, when we have a chat, you know, real-time chat on a website, I get disenchanted personally by a lot of them. Because I run into it, you know, on sound, you know, audio websites and stuff, but where it's nothing more than their assignment is a fact-finding mission, just to get my email and my phone number, and that's it. There's no content, there's no quality, there's no depth. Is that the same thing at BuilderChat, or have you expanded beyond the walls of give me your name, give me your email?

James Matte: Yeah, totally. That's an awesome question. And I think a large part of the [00:05:00] value that, you know, whatever solution you decide to implement, if that's human OSCs or a digital chat solution, is it actually has the ability to broaden your funnel. We're kind of moving out of an era in the home building industry where, you know, everybody was focused on inbound leads and gatekeeping a lot of their information. Buyers are a lot more savvy. They expect access to information, and what we're shooting to do is kind of help broaden that top of funnel. So, we want to give more people the opportunity to engage and ask questions. And I don't know about you personally, but I'd say 99% of the time, if I open a chat widget and I have to enter my name and email to chat, I usually just close it and move on.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm out too.

James Matte: Exactly. So, yeah, that's something that we're looking to avoid, and we're training our assistants to ask pre-qualifying questions and also identify buying signals and when the best time is to say, Hey, like, maybe you should speak with our team, so.

Greg Bray: Let's drill down into that for a minute. Why do you think so [00:06:00] many folks are trying to gatekeep the chat by demanding contact information before they'll answer a question? What's the kind of goal and opportunity that's being missed there?

James Matte: Yeah. Well, not that it's not effective. I still think like having a gated chat is better than having nothing. So, a little bit of a caveat there, and you will get some contact form submissions. But when you do that, basically, you just have another glorified form on your website, right? And everybody already has contact submission forms. So, you really need to ask yourself, if I'm implementing chat, am I trying to add another layer or level of service here, or am I just introducing another form?

I joke around, I don't know if I've coined this term, but kind of tying into the auto industry's tire kickers. I like to call them foundation kickers. So, you might have a lot of people coming by that just have some general questions. Maybe they don't know if home ownership is a possibility for them, right? Maybe they're a renter and they just have some general FAQs. So, we can help filter all of those out without, you know, [00:07:00] gathering their information unnecessarily, having your team have to follow up. And then, there's the ability to kind of provide that prompt service.

And it's almost akin to like, say, walking into a store, and everybody's experienced this, when you don't want to talk to somebody, they're all over you. And whenever you need help, nobody's there to be found, right? So, the chat with the form right away, that's the people that are all over you when you're not ready to talk to somebody yet. On the flip side, we want to have something there for when somebody does have a question, but they're not quite ready to engage with your sales team.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, a lot of our listeners may have picked up on this. You have just a pinch of a Canadian voice. So, the question would be, does your solution, is it able to speak to the weird-speaking people in a certain area of Canada that I don't understand? That weird area, I believe, is around Quebec. I don't know. Could be somewhere around there. Do you have the ability to speak in foreign languages?

James Matte: Yeah, so our chat [00:08:00] assistance are totally multilingual. So, we've really focused on optimizing for the most popular languages in North America, which is where our clients are located. So, we're looking at French, English, of course, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, and languages like that are the primary languages. It's tough because what we try to do is fit in with a builder's brand, tone, and messaging, but also have the adaptability to mirror and match website visitors' chat style. So, if they come in with a bunch of slang or say howdy, the assistant will interact with them in their communication style.

Kevin Weitzel: What? So, using the example of like the Rio Grande. If I'm building homes on the Rio Grande and I have a large Hispanic population that are buying my homes, I can automatically detect that and switch over to Spanish.

But let's say I'm in, I don't know, Chicago or Philadelphia, and in this one small pocket of clients that I have that are circa seventies pimps. Can your platform speak in that [00:09:00] seventies airplane jive?

James Matte: You'll definitely recognize a little bit of an adaption there. And again, we are trying to manage that between maintaining like a professional brand appearance as well. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun, actually, Kevin, when we were messing around with that. I think that was one of my favorite things to do. We had a client where they had a little bit of a French flare to the way that they branded one of their high-rise developments. So, you know, we jump in with a little bit of that French vibe as well, and kind of mirror that brand. And yeah, if you're using a lot of slang, we definitely want to do our best to meet your buyer where they're at.

Greg Bray: So, to answer your question, Kevin, they speak professional jive.

Kevin Weitzel: Professional jive, yes. As opposed to street jive. Yeah.

Greg Bray: The jive you would only use in the office.

Kevin Weitzel: So, with the follow-up, it's not, ya dig, it's, ya dig what I'm saying?

James Matte: Yeah. That might vary, but it's definitely not statically programmed, but it is fun. It is fun. I'll say that.

Kevin Weitzel: I love it.

Greg Bray: So, James, we know that [00:10:00] today's buyers, when they have questions, they're looking for quick answers. When you guys start working with somebody and bring these tools to bear, are you able to see like a faster response time than what the builders were able to do before, and what kinds of impacts that has on that lead generation in those relationship-building moments with buyers?

James Matte: Definitely. Speed to reply has a huge impact on how a potential buyer perceives your brand and company as a whole. Contractors and home builders are notorious for being slow to reply and spotty with communications. That's something that's drastically improved, especially over the past 10 years. As a new home salesperson, one of the main compliments that I got was like, I reached out to 3, 4, 5 builders, and you're the first one to get back to me. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. So, people do appreciate that.

Even if it's not a human interface, being there to instantly answer questions, which is what we [00:11:00] provide, definitely works towards, even if it's a subconscious elevated perception of your brand's responsiveness and customer service levels. So, human OSCs are amazing. I totally love what they do, but humans have limited bandwidth as well, right? So, like our digital assistant might be chatting with a hundred people at the same time and giving all of those people accurate responses instantaneously within a few seconds.

Greg Bray: So, let's talk about the human element then. Because one of the fears that some people have is, well, we want to make sure that we have that human connection in the relationship. How do you balance that? Are we trying to replace the OSCs? Are we trying to just kind of help them? What's your vision of how technology and people come together?

James Matte: That's an excellent question. It's pretty dynamic as well. The affordability of a digital assistant has the potential to level the playing field for a builder that maybe doesn't have the budget to hire full-time OSCs [00:12:00] to man their website. Not every builder can afford to pay full-time wages for one to three, five humans to manage out on their website. So, for those builders, we aren't really replacing humans. What we're doing is we're giving them an opportunity to add that layer of customer service without the costs that aren't attainable for them.

You know, on the flip side of that, if you're a company that does have the bandwidth and budget to have human OSCs, that's amazing. We're not here to replace them, but we do have an opportunity to again elevate that level of service. Of course, humans they need days off, they get sick, they have specific working hours. Adding a digital layer to your human OSC team can expand your coverage to 24/7.

One thing that was really surprising for us is, we're seeing over 50% of our chat engagements after hours when the team isn't working. So, depending on when your human OSCs are working, there might be some opportunity to capture some additional engagement, [00:13:00], and it depends like where your buyers are coming from as well. For example, if a large portion of your client base is military, coming at you from different time zones, we can help you cover those as well.

So, I don't think it's here to replace humans, at least that's not our intent. We can help level the playing field. But it's almost like saying, Does your email replace humans, or does your voicemail service replace humans? No, it gives you another layer of customer service and another way to interact with your buyers, and also makes your human team more efficient.

Greg Bray: Did you say 50% of the chats are out of regular hours? Half?

James Matte: Over 50%. Yeah. That fluctuates, of course, from month to month, but yeah, that blew me away. Even when we initially built ours out years ago using the foreign workers, that was one of the things I loved is that I was getting pinged with leads when I wasn't working. And you think about it, it makes sense. The latest I've seen, I think with builders, is their sales team might work [00:14:00] till 8:00 PM. Well, if I'm a potential buyer, I'm working till 6:00 PM. I got to go pick the kids up. I go home, I eat supper. It's already 7:45, right? I hop on your website. Now it's 8:01 and I can't get a hold of anybody. It's something I'm surprised I didn't anticipate. But yeah, it's very blatant and consistent.

Greg Bray: All right, James, do you guys dig in and mine the data to see like, common questions across clients and things like that, just for patterns? What are some of the surprises that you see in that kind of data? What are some of the questions that you're like, Oh man, I never thought people would be asking this?

James Matte: Yeah. You know, one of the things that surprised us the most was existing homeowners engaging with the chat and looking for information. So, you know, we've even had people come in and ask for like HOA info or contact for their HOA, asking about like pools being open, things like this. And then we do have clients coming in just asking for guidance for warranty and [00:15:00] things like that. So, although we were initially only focused on that forward-facing, kind of sales assisting, there's a huge opportunity here for serving existing owners and providing that 24/7 support to them as well.

Greg Bray: So, let's take some of your experience, James, because you've been the guy trying to get the sale, and now you're trying to help other people get the sale. What are some of the things that you've learned in general about that sales journey and nurturing people through that journey that you feel this technology can really enhance or help, more than just being available, and beyond just fast responses and after-hours availability? What are some of the other things that can help support?

James Matte: That's a really dynamic question. One of the most important aspects of being a good salesperson is having the ability to meet your client where they're at. I really feel that's what we're helping builders position for here. Some buyers they might [00:16:00] want to go really in depth online, some people might just want a few quick answers. Some people are just reaching out to set an appointment. So, I think that's a really dynamic question and kind of tough to answer. Just kind of meeting the buyer where they're at is the most important thing I feel, so.

Greg Bray: How would you measure success with using these types of technology tools? What are some of the metrics you guys try to take a look at?

James Matte: Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, I think success is subjective, right? I just spoke with a small custom builder the other day that spent $2,500 on PPC ads last month and didn't generate a single lead. For that builder, maybe getting one or two leads from their website might be considered success, right? For a high-performing sales and marketing team, those benchmarks are going to look quite different. Volume comes into play here as well, right?

So, a 1%, 2% improvement for a very large volume builder could be considered very successful. [00:17:00] Whereas a one or 2% bump for somebody doing low volume might not have a huge impact. So, I think that's where the collaborative approach comes in. We really do our best to work with teams and find out what's important to them and what would mean success for them.

So, for some, it is just expanding their coverage and customer service. For some people, you know, it's that uptick in leads. In general, I would say, you know, it's always good to be growing and improving, and we have a responsibility to be providing our clients the best service possible. That's kind of the approach I take. I hope that answered your question, Greg.

Greg Bray: All good. So James, when you're out talking to builders, and of course, home builders have this reputation of being a little bit technology adverse. I'm not sure it's totally fair, but it's kind of the stereotype. What types of concerns do you see people have when you start talking about technology tools and the kinds of things that make them uncomfortable with kind of moving forward, and how do you address those?

James Matte: Totally. [00:18:00] That's a great question. Home building is funny, and I do think that you're correct as far as, you know, a little bit of a hesitancy to adopt new technology. I think a lot of that comes from like the legacy software era, dealing with these huge corporations that are really slow to move, very, very expensive, labor-intensive to learn the platform and to implement and train your team. So, these are all things that we're working to mitigate.

We do offer a totally done for you service that integrates into your existing tech stack. So, you have no new tech to learn, nothing to train your team on, no new dashboards to learn or anything like that. We're sending out data reports at the frequency that our clients like to see them. So, the big one is cost.

Again, going back to like legacy software, typically, you're looking at tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement a software solution. Things are becoming a lot more competitive. At BuilderChat, our mission is to lower the cost per lead for our clients as much as possible. So, we [00:19:00] really do our best to be agile, competitive, really a low threshold for entry as far as cost and learning new tech and implementation is concerned.

Greg Bray: So with that, do you ever have anybody express concerns about the tool giving wrong answers? You're giving control to this computer to answer my buyer's questions. How do we make sure that it's giving them the right answers? Because we've all kind of seen some of these AI things just make stuff up sometimes. Do we have those types of issues or concerns with how this works?

James Matte: Yeah, that's an excellent question. In the AI space, we call that hallucination, right? So, basically, the AI models coming back and presenting something as fact that it made up for whatever reason. That's becoming less and less of an issue as the industry matures. For us, that's a huge concern of ours, and we do shoot for a hundred percent accuracy. So, how do we achieve that?

You know, it's a very dynamic approach, and it varies from client [00:20:00] demographic to demographic. You know, Kevin touched on communication styles earlier. It's impossible to anticipate a hundred percent of the ways that every buyer is going to ask every single question. Of course, as we learn and grow as a company, we're getting better and better at that.

But what we do is, our team is monitoring chat quality for all of our clients every single day. So, basically every single chat gets analyzed for response accuracy, and if we notice any issues, we tune those up right away. But before we even go live, we're making sure that there's no huge mistakes that could impact the builder, especially from like a liability perspective or anything like that.

Kevin Weitzel: So, basically, the absolutes get covered for sure, but any gray area, your service might ask for some sort of clarifier, or you know, say that we can get back to you, one of my human counterparts will get back to you. Something along those lines.

James Matte: Typically, we've set up fallbacks for this, multiple layers of fallbacks. So, if the model for some reason isn't able to answer a question, [00:21:00] often it won't be because it doesn't have the info, it'll be because of the way that the user phrased their prompt. Basically, we have fallbacks set up so that instead of hallucinating or instead of giving a wrong answer, it'll recommend to connect with the team, and say, I had trouble digging up that information, and I can't answer that for you right now.

Greg Bray: So, knowing what you know about new home sales, if somebody's just trying to say, Hey, I just want to make my online lead engagement better, what's just one quick thing they should start looking at or begin with?

James Matte: I would say even with your human team, maybe play around with response times. If you have a one-day response time, probably a big opportunity for improvement. If your response time right now is two hours, maybe shoot for 1.5 or one hour. I really do think that's key. As I mentioned earlier, that was the number one compliment that I received from any prospective home buyer was response time. So, I would suggest that.

Greg Bray: All [00:22:00] right, number one thing's response time. You heard it here, Kevin.

Kevin Weitzel: I heard that, too. So, speaking of response time, James, Greg is coming at you in an alley. Are you going to use a tiger stance or a back stance? Quick.

James Matte: Well, that's subjective as well, Kevin. I don't know.

Greg Bray: Does he have a gun or a knife?

James Matte: I would say I'd run.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, he's going with a run. Okay. Well, I was thinking Taekwondo. You might, you know, throw out the tiger stance or something. I don't know. I don't know. I was just, just poking there. Anyway.

Greg Bray: Greg's coming at you an alley. How about you just say, Hey, Greg.

Kevin Weitzel: Greg, why are you in this alley?

Greg Bray: Oh, James, we appreciate your time today. Any kind of last words or thoughts of advice that you wanted to share today before we wrap up?

James Matte: You know, from my perspective, I do feel that home building has, you know, a lot of opportunity to grow. It's been really fun. My last tip is just to kind of remain curious and always look for opportunities to improve and better serve the industry and better serve our [00:23:00] buyers.

Greg Bray: James, before we let you go, if somebody wants to learn more, what's the best way for them to reach out and get in touch?

James Matte: For sure. So, uh, you can definitely find me on LinkedIn, James Matte. You can visit our websites, that's builderchat.us in the states and builderchat.ca in Canada. Feel free to grab a 15-minute time slot if you just want to get together for a chat or if you have any questions.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, everybody, for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you. [00:24:00]