e27 revisited the conversation we had in 2015 with Paul Trayman, the man behind FazWaz, about how far the platform has grown within the last three years

When it was first being featured, the property tech was just being launched for a week. Even then, it was already preparing to get ahead of its competitors by making sure that the listings on their platform are updated and fully backed up by accurate data.

Now, three years later, e27 gets a chance to talk to the same Paul Trayman, with FazWaz being readied to get automated to better serve its eight countries-based visitors.

Trip down the memory lane

In its first feature, FazWaz branded itself as a data-driven, comparison platform that place listings side-by-side with the highlights of possible fees and costs helping users to make a better-informed decision, as well as value estimation for sellers and free property listing for developers. But to get to that point, it was a challenging quest.

“The limitation of the property market information was a challenge. We actually have to come down, go out to talk, and build relationship within the property network. It takes time because there’s not enough amount of correct information and no proper system was built around it,” explains Trayman.

When they were ready to launch, finding local manpower to join the team became another challenge. “People here are simply more drawn to multinational companies,” says Trayman. But now, they have managed to grow from 15 to 20 people to 70 people spread across offices in Thailand.

On aggressive market distribution

Trayman, who is holding the position of COO in the company, uses the term “aggressive” to explain the marketing strategy the company has accumulated. “Right now, our website is available in seven different languages, and we have presence in regions across Southeast Asia and UEA,” he says.

From being based in Phuket when it was first launched, now FazWaz has offices in five of the country’s main cities where exciting resorts and housing development projects are at, such as Pattaya, Koh Samui, Hua Hin, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok. With this kind of distribution, FazWaz believes it has a better market knowledge and even customer reach in Thailand.

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With FazWazGroup, the company’s move also includes neighbouring countries within their online listing. It implements a user experience that is expected to be seamless, straightforward, and catered to main options in property, which would be buy, sell, and rent.

Another thing to note about the way they strategise the property marketing is how they utilise content placement in burgeoning local online media. “By having partnerships with the likes of Baanthai, The Thaiger, Thaivisa, National Multimedia, and Bangkok Biz News, we have secured a place using FazWaz brand as the go-to property guru in the scene. We provide property contents to these online medias, and that’s how we got the traffic that has potentials to convert into real users,” explains Trayman.

The future of property tech is automated

By the end of this year, FazWaz plans to launch an artificial intelligence, machine learning-powered chatbot. The chatbot is to serve as the front face of the customer service process on their platform.

“We don’t want just a chatbot that’s robotic and answers our customer’s inquiries with templated answer. The purpose of having the chatbot is to reduce the process customers must go through to check a listing. We plan on facilitating the users so they can immediately ask what they are looking for through the chatbot and without waiting, the users will get the results. The chatbot we want to build will be a virtual property agent that assist, not just an answering machine,” said Trayman.

The plan to have a virtual agent will make FazWaz one of the first proptech company to do so. Trayman added that it will further make sure their customer process is more efficient and productive because the chatbot ability to respond will be based on the interaction the users have made in the platform, and the chatbot will be conversational.

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Not only chatbots for the platform users, all FazWaz internal team will also use the chatbots to help them with the data. As they store a lot of property listings information, it can get difficult to navigate through all of the information. With chatbot, FazWaz is also looking to help to streamline the process of acquiring listing information on their system.

As they are now stepping onto something transformational for both their company and -indirectly- the property tech scene, the company which started off with bootstrap funding is now in talk with venture capitalists interested to invest on their growth.

“We’re not just matchmaking platform between market data with experienced local agents, buyers, and renters with their future homes, we are different than that. We are a lead generation property platform complemented with direct sales option, and soon, an automated online property agent,” Trayman closes.

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Image Credit: Jakob Owens on Unsplash

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