Ola Estate is a real estate agency based near Lisbon, Portugal. The team helps buyers and renters find properties across the Lisbon and Porto regions, as well as Spain. Olga Daronda helps run the business, which fields inquiries from Google listings, property websites, and other channels. With callers speaking Portuguese, English, and Russian, keeping up with every inquiry was a constant challenge.
Challenge
Ola Estate didn't have a receptionist or answering service. Phone numbers were spread across multiple platforms, and no one was dedicated to picking up.
"We did not have a specific person answering all the phones, but people are calling us a lot," Olga says.
The team eventually realized what the unanswered calls were costing them. "One day, we understood that it's not all right. We miss some potential leads," she says.
On top of the volume, Ola Estate had a language problem. The business serves clients across Portugal and Spain, so calls arrive in Portuguese, English, and Russian. Finding a solution that could handle all three was difficult.
"The majority of our calls are in Portuguese, and we needed Portuguese and also at the same time English and Russian," Olga says. "And not all providers were able to offer multi-language support."
She compared several options. Most couldn't meet the multilingual requirement.
Solution
Olga decided to try Upfirst. "I compared several other solutions. I chose to try Upfirst," she says.
She wrote detailed instructions for how the AI receptionist should handle language switching. The greeting plays in Portuguese, but callers might speak English or Russian.
"I did several instructions writing how exactly they should switch language," Olga explains. "Like, if the person starts speaking one language, you should immediately switch because the greeting message is in Portuguese, but people may call in English or different language."
The Upfirst team helped her get everything set up. For Olga, that direct access to the team was a deciding factor. "A lot of help from your colleagues," she says. "It's much better because I can communicate directly. I can ask for features. I can request some stuff, and this is one of the points that appeals to me as well."
Results
Ola Estate no longer loses leads to unanswered phones. The AI receptionist handles incoming calls across all three languages, filters out spam and irrelevant inquiries, and passes along the calls that matter.
"We don't miss important calls, and that's really important, that we receive everything we want to receive, and we don't communicate with people if we see it's not relevant for us or if it's a mistake of some spam call," Olga says.
For Olga, it comes down to two things. "So, this is time saving and not losing important calls," she says.