How an independent lettings agency made Felicity part of the team

Joanne Wright was sceptical. "A little bit scary to think you're handing your business over to what's currently a blue orb."

Four weeks later, Felicity was answering inbound enquiries, qualifying leads overnight, and fielding calls at 2am on a Sunday. Applicants were emailing her by name. One walked into the Nantwich office and asked to speak to her in person.

This is what happened when Wright Letting & Management, a 400-property independent agency in Cheshire, stopped chasing enquiries manually and let Felicity handle the front door.

The Monday morning bottleneck

Wright's lettings workflow ran on Alto CRM and a manually maintained spreadsheet. Every new enquiry triggered the same loop: call or email back, collect income, affordability, household details, chase the gaps, log it, then finally book a viewing. Three to five rounds of back-and-forth per lead was normal.

The worst of it was the weekend. The office closed at 2pm Saturday and reopened 9am Monday. Every enquiry that landed in those 43 hours sat unanswered. By the time Lily, the lettings coordinator, worked through the backlog on Monday morning, prospects were back at work and distracted.

"There's a time delay in receiving the information because at the point they inquire, that's when they're sat at home, that's when they're interested," Joanne explains.

What Felicity does for Wright Lettings

Felicity handles inbound enquiry emails, qualifies leads over email and phone, manages out-of-hours calls, and routes resident queries to the right team member. She runs the full qualifying process the team previously handled manually, including the awkward questions around income, pets, and household size that staff would rather not ask directly.

"Felicity is like a dog with a bone when somebody doesn't answer a question," says Joanne. "She digs and digs and digs until you get that answer."

She persists until every required field is complete. The result is a fully qualified applicant profile delivered to the team, ready for a viewing to be booked.

Deployment was immediate. No training period, no phased rollout. Felicity was live across email and phone within weeks of first contact.

"It's been a whirlwind," says Lily. "Felicity doesn't need training. Jo walked in and said 'this is happening' and we're all like, what's happening? It's instant. It's there. Done."

The numbers

Since going live in January 2026, the impact has been measurable across Wright's entire lettings operation.

• Lead-to-viewing conversion up 3.7x, from 8.4% before Felicity to 31.2% after. More enquiries fully qualified, fewer prospects lost to slow follow-up.
• Response time down from 2-4 hours to under 20 seconds. Every enquiry, whether it arrives at 2pm or 2am, gets an immediate, personalised response.
• ~80% automation rate. Four in five enquiries are fully qualified without any human involvement.
• 57% of conversations happen outside office hours, across evenings, weekends, and bank holidays.

The 43-hour weekend gap is gone. The Monday morning bottleneck is gone.

The real shift

The stats tell part of the story. The bigger change is what happened to Lily's role.

She used to spend her mornings chasing enquiries, collecting qualifying details, doing admin. Now Felicity handles all of that, and Lily's time has shifted to compliance work and regulatory preparation, including getting ready for the Renters' Rights Act.

"Before Felicity, every Monday morning I was chasing up people, calling them, trying to get their details and book their viewings. Now I come in and Felicity has done that overnight."

For applicants and landlords, the experience is a 24/7 service that never drops a conversation. Felicity's voice is natural enough that most applicants don't realise she's AI. Some have engaged with her for weeks before finding out.

"We haven't actually told anybody that Felicity isn't a real person," Joanne admits. "Emails come in 'Hi Felicity.' They think they're emailing a real person."

What comes next

Wright Lettings are now rolling out phase two: Felicity booking viewings directly and sending automated reminders to cut no-shows. And Joanne has a new daily briefing from Felicity, a morning summary of everything that came in overnight and what needs attention.

When asked how it feels now compared to before they onboarded AI into their operations, Joanne doesn't hesitate: "When you get used to it, you think, well, how did we ever manage not to have it? It's like part of our life now."