Scheduling and Special Considerations for Coronavirus / COVID-19

Since the impact of Coronavirus is often specific to individual locations, ShowMojo cannot provide a one-size-fits-all set of recommendations. Our goal with this article is to provide options based on the variety of needs we have seen in the last couple weeks.

We also do not want to suggest what practices might be “safe” or “safe enough” or anything similar. The current situation with Coronavirus is just too dynamic, both locally and globally.

Special Instructions to Prospects

Regardless of the steps your company takes in response to Coronavirus, you can let your prospect know when they look at your ShowMojo-enabled listings using the new Special Announcement feature.

You can even update both the email and text Automatic Response to Listing Site Inquiries‍ to better direct prospects to video and virtual tour options.

Finally, you can also provide additional information in the showing details email sent to all prospects who schedule showings. This can be done on the Communication Settings page.

Precautions for In-Person Showings

If you are continuing with in-person showings, here are a couple steps that can be taken using ShowMojo's scheduling settings.

Limit or Stop Group Showings: In order to promote social distancing, you can reduce showings to just one prospect (or perhaps two prospects) for each showtime.

Longer Showing Windows: Social distancing might mean slower showings. Or you might need to allow your agents more time between showings to perform basic sanitization tasks, such as disinfecting door knobs or other surfaces that are often touched by prospects when viewing your home. For these reasons or any other, you can increase the duration of time allowed each showing.

Both these options can be updates on the Calendar page in the Options section.

Use Self-Showings to Limit Contacts

For many, this might sound obvious -- but the majority of ShowMojo users complete in-person showings. So self-showings might not be the first idea to come to mind. In a nut-shell, a self-showing (facilitated with lockbox or smartlock) resolves the social distancing issue for almost any self-showing.

If this self-showing concept really is new to you, check out our article What is a Self-Showing?‍

To help maintain the high-touch nature of an in-person showing, you can even create a self-guided tour complete with audio and photos that can be added to help guide your prospect during their self-showing. This will help ensure that they catch every highlight of your listing and have a more organized self-showing experience. These tours can be added at the bottom of the Listings page in the Self-Guided Tour section.

Real Time Video Tours

With this option, ShowMojo can pre-qualify and schedule showings like you normal and the showing agent is physically at the home, but the prospect attends the showing like a virtual meeting.

ShowMojo does all the heavy lifting to ensure everything goes smoothly.

To get started with this option, read the article: Schedule and Conduct Real Time Virtual Tours‍.

Virtual Alternatives to Showings

You can post video and 3D tours to your ShowMojo listing pages to reduce the need for a showing.

See the following articles for more information:

Pause Some or All Showings

For any periods when you choose to block all showings, the No Showing Days feature can be used to do just that. If you conduct both self-showings and in-person showings, this feature allows you to choose if you want to block all showings, or only discontinue in-person showings so that self-showings may continue. 

On a listing by listing basis, you can also Not Allow Showings on a Listing Before a Date, After a Date, or During a Specific Timeframe‍.

Finally, if for any reason you need to quickly cancel upcoming scheduled showings, you can utilize the Emergency Reschedule feature to cancel those showings and create no showing days all at once.

Take Applications and Application Fees Online

If for any reason your office is still accepting applications or the fees associated with them in-person, now's the time to reconsider that approach. Your ShowMojo account already has built-in tools to immediately take your application process online.

For more information, see these articles: 


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