telli | our casestudy with Engel & Völkers LiquidHome

About

Engel & Völkers LiquidHome is a partial property sale platform that enables German and Austrian homeowners to partially sell their homes without moving out. Since launching in 2020, the company has facilitated the partial acquisition of over €1.1 billion in assets, empowering seniors and retirees with liquidity, financial flexibility, and independence.

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Challenge

Expanding call volume to nurture past and present leads

Engel & Völkers LiquidHome’s (EVLH) innovative equity release model instantly resonated with the German and Austrian markets, helping the company close over 2,000 partial home sales by 2025. And Head of Process Management Mareike Wiethölter knew this was just the start. With thousands of new leads pouring into the company’s CRM each month, the sales opportunities were endless.

The problem? “It often takes people years to commit to partially selling their homes,” Mareike explains. “To stay on their radar, you need to play the long game and keep reaching back out.”

To make sure every prospective seller felt truly supported from start to finish, her team always followed up their email and direct mail outreach with personal phone calls. This high-touch approach quickly built trust and helped differentiate their complex offering.

However, with all their new leads, maintaining that level of service stretched the team’s capacity and meant less time for other valuable opportunities, like re-engaging dormant leads. Mareike knew there was a major opportunity there: to bring high-potential leads back into the pipeline, but also to gather insights on why people step back from the process in the first place.

She decided to bring on an agent-based call automation platform that would enable her team to nurture both of these groups with a consistent, personalized approach. Her ideal solution would:

Call a high volume of new and dormant leads
Mimic the personalized sales style of EVLH’s human reps
Time calls to reach leads when they’re most inclined to pick up

Soon, Mareike discovered telli, and the platform checked every box on her list. Seeing its potential, she put it to work right away.

“We knew AI call automation was the next frontier, but we didn’t want to risk turning off our customers. So far, telli’s friendly and professional voice agents have been very well received by our customers.”

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Solution

Fast-learning AI voice agents accelerate lead response and reengagement

Immediately after kicking off with telli, Mareike’s team received test agents to start optimizing. “I couldn’t believe how quickly the agents adapted to our preferences,” she says. “Right away, they sounded knowledgeable and natural enough to interact with our customers.”

Today, the agents are always working in the background, efficiently nurturing leads through different stages of the funnel with thoughtful phone outreach. And thanks to telli’s smart dialing strategy, which analyzes historical reachability data to determine optimal call times, they always call exactly when the lead is most inclined to pick up. If the lead doesn’t answer, the agents keep following up at the best times over an extended period until they succeed or reach the maximum number of attempts.

To tailor calls to both past and present leads, EVLH deploys two distinct outbound agents:

An early engager to nurture new leads: This agent follows up with leads who recently received promotional materials to capture enough data for a non-binding offer. If needed, the agent schedules a consultation with a rep (directly in the rep’s calendar) to address more complex questions.‍
A reengager to qualify past leads: This agent gets back in touch with customers who had shown previous interest. If they want to learn more, the agent sets up a call with a rep. If not, the agent asks for feedback to help EVLH improve.

With these agents, Mareike’s team can move serious leads down the funnel faster, figure out precisely why leads go cold, and clean up their lengthy CRM lists to prioritize the highest-value opportunities.

While the agents performed right out of the gate, the team also regularly uses telli’s prompt editor to make any tweaks along the way. This smart editor, which operates as an internal AI chat agent, adjusts prompts for them based on telli’s observed best practices. EVLH enjoys feeding it new information to test out different agent versions and automated responses.

So far, these highly optimized agents are resonating with customers. E&V has consistently found that conversations flow smoothly, with customers readily engaging and responding to the agents’ questions. The best proof of all? Previously silent leads are requesting follow-ups at a remarkably high rate.

“telli enables us to call customers at the click of a mouse. Now, we’re initiating multiple highly individualized conversations at a time — without any pull on our team.”

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Results

EV LiquidHome GmbH reaches 50% of leads at a 20% reactivation rate

telli’s customized voice agents multiply Mareike’s team’s outbound calling capacity. Now, they connect with more leads at different stages of the buying journey, driving unprecedented interest in EVLH’s unique real estate offering and inspiring more homeowners to seek financial flexibility.

The results:

10x increase in monthly call volume
20% reactivation rate for outbound calls among reached leads
50% outbound reachability

Next, Mareike is excited to use telli to handle inbound calls outside of business hours. Even with the new inbound agent still in trials, it’s already fielding calls with a 100% connection rate. This means the team captures every opportunity, no matter when people reach out, for even stronger results and customer experiences in the future.