OLX Group builds its CAI using Twilio's WhatsApp platform to ensure 24/7 communication
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Challenge
Ensure that real estate agencies and real estate agents are able to promptly address end consumers’ questions regarding advertised properties, with the efficiency needed to secure more closed deals and reduce the number of abandoned transactions.
Solution
Creation of a virtual assistant—Izi—powered by AI developed by the OLX Group and using Twilio’s WhatsApp Business channel.
The company gains efficiency in customer service, accuracy in responses, and greater end-customer satisfaction
The OLX Group is Brazil's leading classifieds marketplace, bringing together the OLX, Zap Imóveis, and Viva Real brands. In the real estate sector, which includes the three portals, the company leads in terms of the number of visits.
With a robust and ever-growing volume of real estate searches, the OLX Group was still facing a major challenge that prevented the company from providing 100% efficient service to its clients (real estate agents and agencies) and consumers (people searching for properties on the portal). The underlying problem was a communication gap between these parties, who often misunderstood each other when exchanging messages. Customers interested in a listed property would send a message via WhatsApp with their questions, and it would take up to several days to receive a response—provided by a human, the real estate agent—which could lead to a loss of interest in the property and even prevent a new deal from closing.
To resolve this issue, development began on Izi, a project to create a virtual agent using the website’s database of listings, an AI solution developed in-house by the OLX Group, and the WhatsApp Business channel provided by Twilio.
“Are you still there?” - The right timing for communication is crucial!
The biggest challenge faced by the OLX Group was the disconnect between real estate agents and agencies, and end consumers. In 57% of cases, leads that came to real estate agencies via the website arrived outside of business hours—between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. the following day—that is, during the night and early morning, when no agents were available to assist them.
"Since most people are working during business hours, it stands to reason that they only have the evenings to devote to their personal activities, such as looking for a home. In addition, there is a sense of urgency involved, the desire to receive a response as soon as possible. Therefore, we needed to ensure availability when these consumers needed assistance, securing business for real estate agencies and showcasing the effectiveness of our ads"
In addition, customers often had only brief questions about property details, yet it could take up to three days to receive a response, especially if a message was sent over the weekend. This made conversions difficult and led to abandoned sales and dissatisfaction, both for customers who expected an immediate response and for salespeople who were missing out on the chance to engage with and convert new customers.
Therefore, the OLX Group aimed to provide a service that would be available at the most convenient time for the end consumer, ensuring better deals for advertisers. In addition, the responses needed to be submitted efficiently via a reliable platform.
Quick responses using Twilio’s AI and WhatsApp
To address these issues and provide efficient, fast, high-quality customer service that ensures customer engagement, the OLX Group team partnered with Twilio to develop the virtual agent Izi.
The project became available to OLX Group customers in September 2025. In order to help real estate agencies and brokers serve their clients, Izi is offered as part of an advertising package that works across all OLX Group portals, ensuring greater efficiency in serving customers who engage with the various adverts.
Izi’s job is to promptly assist customers who are looking for information about the properties listed by the client, responding within seconds, answering questions, and providing customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The AI technology is a solution developed in-house by the OLX Group, and the platform chosen to facilitate conversations between the AI and consumers is WhatsApp Business, provided by Twilio. In addition, the WhatsApp numbers used in the ads—which are enabled to use Izi—are provided by Twilio exclusively for this application. With Twilio phone numbers, customers can easily choose their local area code, which ensures personalized service and builds trust with users by identifying the contact information for their local real estate agency.
"Izi can answer complex questions about the details of a listed property and then turn the conversation into a scheduled property tour, regardless of the time the inquiry is made, with an immediate response. When an appointment is scheduled with a real estate agent or agency during business hours, they already know that the contact is a strong lead, making closing the deal much more likely."
For the OLX Group, key factors in choosing Twilio include communication stability, the platform’s ease of use and flexibility, a WhatsApp-based solution, and the ability to scale operations. Izi can be customized to meet the needs of the client or advertiser who uses it, and can even operate only during hours when real estate agents are not working. In other words, it acts as a support tool for real estate agents, without replacing the human touch; it is designed to improve and streamline the work of real estate agents by serving as a personal assistant via WhatsApp and leveraging a detailed database based on existing listings.
The partnership with Izi began in Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro and has since expanded throughout Brazil. As soon as the virtual agent went live in September 2025, there was a “surge” in sign-ups, with more than 88 OLX Group customers signing up for the AI by December 2025.
To date, more than 7,000 conversations have been recorded, with more than 59,000 messages exchanged between customers and Izi. Once the chat is closed, the data is deleted from the chat history to ensure user security and prevent data leaks; however, the data remains stored by the OLX Group itself on AWS servers so that real estate agencies can access the chat history later if necessary.
In the near future, the company plans to make Izi’s customer service available not only via text message on WhatsApp, but also via voice, a feature available through the Twilio platform.
And the results just keep coming in
Not only is the service efficient and fast, but end users have also reported being more satisfied with the service, with some customers praising Izi as “the best service I’ve ever had.”
In addition, agents can continue to work even when they are away for various reasons, since Izi only sends them the “hottest” leads, which are worth the agent’s effort even when they are away for personal reasons.
Choosing Twilio has changed the OLX Group forever
“The ability to manage everything on a single platform, the assurance of cutting-edge technology, and the guaranteed efficiency and scalability, combined with the simplicity and support provided by the Twilio team, made Twilio the ideal partner for the OLX Group and for building Izi. We are very pleased and hope that more partnerships will emerge soon,” Lilian concludes.
