James Matte, CEO and Co-founder of BuilderChat, recently joined Greg Bray and Kevin Weitzel on the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast to talk AI chat, buyer engagement, and why response time might be your biggest untapped lever. Listen to the full conversation below.
The Problem With Most Builder Chatbots
Here’s a stat that should make every builder uncomfortable: over 30% of chat engagements on BuilderChat’s platform happen after business hours when your sales team is completely offline. For some builders it hits as high as 50%. That’s not an edge case. That’s over one third of your potential conversations happening in a window where most builders have zero coverage.
And the chat tools many builders do have? They’re often making things worse. If a buyer opens your chat widget and has to enter their name and email before they can ask a single question, most of them (including James) just close it and move on. You haven’t captured a lead. You’ve confirmed to the buyer that you’re more interested in their contact info than their question.
Broadening the Funnel, Not Just Gating It
James made a sharp distinction on the show: a form-gated chat isn’t a chat tool, it’s just another contact form wearing a costume. The real opportunity with conversational AI is widening the top of your funnel by giving buyers a low-pressure way to get answers before they’re ready to talk to a human.
He introduced the term “foundation kickers”, the home-buying equivalent of tire kickers. People who are curious, early-stage, or just not ready. A good AI assistant handles those conversations without burning your OSC team’s time, while identifying the buyers who are showing real intent and routing them toward a human at exactly the right moment.
AI + Human OSCs: Not Either/Or
James was direct about this: BuilderChat isn’t here to replace human OSCs. The framework he laid out is more useful:
For builders without OSC budgets a digital assistant levels the playing field, providing 24/7 coverage that was previously unaffordable
For builders with OSC teams it extends coverage around the clock, handles the volume humans can’t, and pre-qualifies leads so the OSC team walks into every conversation already knowing the buyer’s situation
For everyone it’s the same logic as voicemail or email: it doesn’t replace people, it gives buyers another way to reach you and gives your team more context when they do connect
The analogy that landed best: “Does your voicemail replace humans? No, it gives you another layer of service and makes your human team more efficient.”
The Hallucination Problem (And How They Solve It)
One of the sharpest questions in the episode came from Greg: what happens when the AI just makes something up? It’s a legitimate concern and anyone who’s played with AI tools has seen it confidently state something wrong.
James’s answer was concrete. BuilderChat’s team monitors every single chat for response accuracy daily. Before going live, the assistant is stress-tested for anything that could create liability. And when the model genuinely doesn’t know something, it doesn’t guess, it falls back to recommending the buyer connect with the team. The fallback is baked in by design and controlled by BuilderChat’s software, not left to chance.
One Free Thing You Can Do Right Now
James’s single best piece of advice for builders who want better online lead engagement, no new tech required:
Cut your response time. If you’re at one day, get to two hours. If you’re at two hours, get to one. The number one compliment James received throughout his seven years in new home sales was simply: “You were the first builder to get back to me.” That edge is still wide open for most builders.
Multilingual and Brand-Adaptive
One underrated capability worth flagging: BuilderChat’s assistants are fully multilingual, with optimization for English, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, and Spanish, and they mirror the communication style of whoever they’re talking to. If a buyer comes in casual, the assistant adapts. If a builder has a specific brand tone, the assistant reflects it. That’s not a minor feature if you’re building in markets with diverse buyer demographics.
Ready to see it in action? Visit their home page and engage with Aurora, their live AI assistant. You can also connect with James directly on LinkedIn or grab a 30-minute slot on his calendar. No pitch, just a conversation.
Thanks to Greg Bray at Blue Tangerine and Kevin Weitzel at OutHouse for hosting. Follow the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast for more powerful builder insights.
