When it comes to relocation and moving home, a new AI option is changing how customers buy. By Bill Mulholland
Everyone seems to be talking about artificial intelligence right now. That’s usually a sign of a buzzword, and over my years in the employee relocation industry, I have seen plenty of buzzwords come and go. AI is different. After spending 26 years helping Fortune 500 companies and government agencies relocate their employees around the world, I believe we’re witnessing something far more significant than another technology trend. We’re watching the way consumers buy fundamentally change.
For most of the internet’s history, businesses have competed for one thing: customer attention. The goal was simple, get potential customers to your website before they landed on a competitor’s. Companies invested heavily in search engine optimization to rank highly on Google or paid for advertising to secure visibility. Success was measured by website traffic, clicks, and completed contact forms. That strategy made perfect sense because the internet became the world’s business directory, and search engines controlled how consumers navigated it. If you could attract a customer to your website first, you had an opportunity to earn their business.
Unfortunately, that isn’t how consumers interact with technology anymore…
More consumers are going to AI Language models like Chat GPT or Gemini to get answers. When someone opens ChatGPT or Gemini they rarely begin with, ‘Show me companies’ Instead, they begin with a problem they need solved. They ask how much something will cost, where they should live, what neighborhood is safest, or how to move across the country without unexpected surprises. They don’t get websites, they get answers. This is the agentic shift from ‘show me’ to ‘do it for me’.
The internet spent the last 25 years getting people to click. The next 25 years will be about helping people accomplish something. The shift from ‘show me’ to ‘do it for me’ is the biggest technology shift the real estate, and relocation industry will ever see.
Don’t take my word for it. The writing is on the wall. Adobe recently reported that traffic from AI sources to US retail websites increased nearly 400 percent year over year. McKinsey has found that roughly half of consumers now use AI-powered search in some form during their buying journey. Even Google, whose business helped define the modern internet, isn’t resisting the change, they are embracing it. AI-powered search experiences now reach more than a billion monthly users, and Google says those tools are generating billions of clicks every week. This isn’t Google versus AI. Google is becoming AI.
Moving is actually a perfect use case for AI. The moving industry is one of very few industry’s that was never disrupted by technology. Retail has Amazon, Travel has Expedia and Finance has Stripe. Sure, there are tools that movers use but fundamentally moving never digitized. To get new customers, like other industries, movers relied on the internet. Consumers were asked to complete long forms, submit their contact information and wait for several companies to call them back. Estimates were manual and required meeting face to face with each mover.
Today’s consumers don’t want to wait three days for someone to schedule an in-home estimate. They don’t want to explain the contents of their home to three different companies. They don’t want to wonder whether the final invoice will match the estimate they received. They expect technology to remove those steps. Consumers want efficiency, they want transparency and in many cases, they don’t want to share their contact info.
In response to this shift, we created a free website and app called ‘Agoyu’. Agoyu uses AI to instantly show consumers the exact cost for their specific move. The way it works is simple: the app allows the customer to scan in the rooms in their house. AI instantly recognizes and lists all the items the person must move. The user then puts in where they are moving to and from and Agoyu immediately shows the exact cost to move with all the top movers. It’s free and the consumer never has to share their contact info. In addition to comparing the cost to move, they can also view each mover’s 3rd party trust signals (Yelp reviews, Better Business Bureau rating, US DOT profile etc). We have, in essence, created the Expedia for the moving industry. No more fake ‘Top Mover’ lists. No more having your information sold. THIS is the shift consumers are looking for.
When we first began allowing homeowners to walk through their homes with nothing more than a smartphone, we were focused on the technology. We wondered whether people would trust artificial intelligence to recognize furniture, estimate shipment sizes and organize an inventory. Would they trust an estimate from a human more? We debated accuracy, adoption rates and user experience.
What happened surprised us. Almost nobody asked about the AI. Instead, they said something remarkably simple. The comment we most often see on our customer satisfaction surveys is: ‘This is how moving should have worked all along.’
Our relocating employees are giving a choice: 1) do it the old fashion way and we’ll have two movers call you to give you an estimate or 2) use our free AI app and get 25 moving quotes in less than three minutes. Ninety-eight percent of our customers chose the AI App.
We’re also seeing the shift emerge across housing. Mortgage technology is evolving rapidly, with companies using AI to simplify qualification and educate borrowers before they ever speak to a loan officer. Real estate platforms are becoming smarter about matching buyers to neighborhoods that fit the way they live rather than simply filtering by price or ZIP code. Across virtually every part of the home buying journey, technology is shifting from providing information to delivering execution. That distinction matters because it the way we market will also be the way we transact.
For years, businesses measured digital success through impressions, traffic and contact forms. Those metrics aren’t disappearing, but they’re becoming secondary to a much more important question. In an agentic world, the most important question companies should be asking themselves is: ‘Can your customer accomplish something meaningful the moment they find your company?’
Large language models like Chat GPT, Gemini and Claude don’t care who purchased the largest advertising budget. They don’t reward companies because they bought more keywords or produced more banner ads. They only care about data, execution and outcome.
That isn’t because consumers suddenly became fascinated with AI. It’s because they prefer immediate value. For decades businesses operated under a simple assumption: trust us first (by sharing your contact info), and we’ll show you our value later (when we call). Consumers have quietly rewritten that agreement. Today consumers are expecting value first. If you do that well, then you’ll earn consumer trust.
I don’t believe AI will ever completely replace relocation professionals, movers or real estate experts. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Technology should handle repetitive work so experienced professionals can spend more time solving problems, providing judgment and helping people make confident decisions during one of the biggest transitions in their lives. That’s where trust has always belonged, and I suspect it always will.
The companies that will win over the next decade won’t be the ones spending the most on advertising. They’ll be the ones removing the most friction. They’ll be the ones who stop asking customers to schedule a meeting before they’ve experienced any value. They’ll be the ones who understand that the first sales call no longer happens at the beginning of the customer journey, it happens after the customer has already accomplished something meaningful.
Bill Mulholland
www.agoyu.com
Bull Mulholland is the Founder and CEO of ARC Relocation and Agoyu. Agoyu is an AI-powered moving platform that helps consumers inventory their homes, compare moving options and receive accurate moving quotes in minutes using only a smartphone. Agoyu is helping transform the moving experience through greater transparency, efficiency and consumer choice.