How ERA Belgium Drove a 5x Increase in Data Quality with Donna

The Challenge

For ERA Belgium, the country's largest residential real estate company, success is built on the strength of its brokers. Operating as a complex franchise network of independent entrepreneurs, the company thrives on the sales acumen and relationship-building skills of its 400-strong frontline team actively selling homes every day. 

Business is local and relationship-driven; people buy and sell homes with someone they know in their village, and build long-term relationships. That model works well in a small setup, but it’s hard to scale. Customer knowledge sits with individual brokers who would often fail to log detailed evaluations after property visits. Personal touches like knowing a client’s hobbies or key family updates builds trust, but this data rarely made it into the system. And if a broker was absent or left the company, it was virtually impossible for someone else to pick up the account.

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As a result, the CRM (Salesforce) data lacked the depth brokers needed to recreate conversations or understand the full customer picture. This strategic blind spot hindered future client interactions, while missing context and inconsistent data made it impossible to scale a relationship-based business without losing quality.

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The Solution

To overcome these challenges, ERA needs information to exist centrally. Data including the personal nuances that strengthen long-term relationships must be accessible to the whole team, so any broker can easily pick up the account. Beyond a software tool to increase sales efficiency, the business wanted a partner who understood and could adapt to their unique processes, which is why Donna stood out.

‍“We really wanted a partner who understands our business processes and adapts to our systems and requirements. That’s exactly what Donna does.” - Michiel Vanhaverbeke, Innovation Manager, ERA Belgium

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The team began piloting Donna with a vision to allow brokers to log detailed, structured evaluations of property visits via a conversation with the AI sales assistant, often from their car between appointments. Recognizing the complexity of driving change across a franchise network, the rollout was intentionally slow and methodical. The journey began with a three-month pilot involving just three hand-picked users to gather feedback and iterate on the tool's functionality. 

One standout benefit was Donna’s integration capabilities. She plugged directly and seamlessly into Salesforce without adding development burden to ERA’s internal teams. She was also able to adapt to the groups exact requirements, following their sales flow and capturing evaluations in real time.

The pilot allowed the team to identify a central challenge: habit formation. Even a tool that simplifies a task faces resistance if that task wasn't being done consistently in the first place. The key was coaching the brokers through the initial awkward phase of a new workflow. 

Following the pilot's success, the program expanded to one full office, and is now scaling across the network with approximately 50 active users. The implementation required minimal work from ERA’s developers. The Donna team handled the heavy lifting, leaving the group to connect the system and modernize their sales process without impacting the many other critical projects running at the time.

The biggest hurdle was not technical but structural, rooted in the unique dynamics of the franchise model. To get buy-in, the business case had to prove clear value not just to the central organization, but to the bottom line of each independent franchisee.

This pressure led to the project's key strategic pivot. While the initial focus was on internal efficiency, the team discovered Donna's most powerful benefit was in external client communication. The detailed data captured by Donna allowed brokers to create stronger stories for clients. For example, when a property doesn’t sell immediately, brokers can sit down with the owner and show concrete data that explains why. Transparency builds trust and makes it easier to guide clients toward the right next steps. This realization shifted the value proposition from a simple time-saving tool to a strategic asset for deepening client relationships.

The Impact

Brokers responded positively from the start. They appreciated being able to complete evaluations on the spot rather than late at night. Many described Donna as their “new best friend”, a sign of strong adoption and a clear win for day-to-day workflow. Donna’s nudges before and after meetings now reinforce the habit of immediately capturing evaluations, addressing one of the biggest challenges: getting brokers to follow up.

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The biggest improvement for ERA is data quality. Reports are consistently completed with much greater detail and the average evaluation text entered into the CRM is now five times longer than it was before when using Donna. Personal context, nuanced observations, and information that helps build trust are all captured inside Salesforce providing a much richer and more valuable dataset for the entire organization. These reports also create a strong foundation for pre-meeting briefings and customer continuity.

“An evaluation report is about five times longer when it’s done with Donna, which is a huge game changer since they are later used for pre-meeting briefings and for really building the relationship.” - Michiel Vanhaverbeke, Innovation Manager, ERA Belgium

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In addition, managers benefit from real-time data. When brokers create leads or log interactions with Donna, information flows instantly into Salesforce. There are no more paper notes or delayed updates and it’s easy to understand what was accomplished within a prospecting block.

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Since brokers varied greatly in the depth of their evaluations, exact time savings are hard to quantify. However, reports that previously took around ten minutes now take roughly two when done with Donna. Because brokers complete them in the car or between appointments, Donna has reduced after-hours admin and the inconsistencies that came with next-day evaluations.

To build a more nuanced understanding of Donna’s impact, the team is now tracking a broader set of metrics beyond data completeness, including usage frequency, depth of use, and time efficiency. The initial champions from the pilot have become a testament to the tool's value. They report the data is better quality and client communications are more professional. They can accomplish administrative tasks in their car that they previously had to do at their desk. This word-of-mouth advocacy from trusted peers is a key driver of the broader rollout, with a plan to scale to 350 brokers by next summer.

With richer data and more consistent relationship insights, Donna helps ERA scale the human side of real estate, without losing what makes it personal.

“We recommend Donna to other organizations with large field sales teams or heavily relationship-oriented sales teams. She’s a very efficient and effective sales admin tool.” - Michiel Vanhaverbeke, Innovation Manager, ERA Belgium

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