Globalization and the development of modern information technology have contributed to the higher importance of communication technological support and its use between the client and the entrepreneur in the service industry. Such tendencies also apply to real estate companies, in particular to real estate agents and brokers. The purpose of this article is to identify the level of service adaptation of the real estate brokerage industry to the general tendencies characterizing the service sector. Two research questions were proposed in the article. The first one is about adjustment of the communication tools used by the real estate brokerage industry to the trends in the services market. The second one includes the assessment of the tools’ efficiency in the opinion of the estate brokers and agents. The literature and critical analysis as well as an introductory survey of real estate agents and brokers were all used in this paper. The introductory survey was conducted with the use of webform among real estate agents affiliated to Powszechne Towarzystwo Ekspertów i Doradców Rynku Nieruchomości, between the 2nd of October and 15th of November 2017. After a basic analysis, we can conclude that the real estate sector is quite similar to other services’ sectors as far as the new means of communication usage in contacts with clients are concerned. The empirical studies results show that tools such as smartphone and laptop in combination with social media play an important role in today’s communication trends. The role of traditional means of communication, on the other hand, such as leaflets and newspapers has significantly decreased.

The pandemic situation has obliged organizations to shift all possible tasks to the Internet and to replace on-site work by its remote version. Without a preparation stage, companies were forced to adopt remote working at the individual-level and cloud computing at the organization level simultaneously. As a consequence, the accelerated shift toward digital work forced employees to rapidly learn how to use various ICT tools (which were not necessarily compatible with each other) and how to implement them into a daily routine.The protracted pandemic has led to many employees working from home, especially those doing knowledge-based work, and has often imposed remote work without the on-site option. This has led (and is still leading) to digital fatigue of workers (a phenomenon that negatively affects the performance of both the employee and the organization), the effects of which have already been named and described by scientists. One solution to unburden employees could be by relieving them from everyday, repetitive, and often tedious jobs By delegating these tasks to bots (especially those that may be subject to automation), it will enable employees to deal with more creative and knowledge-based tasks that require attention and do not cause the same level of fatigue and weariness. In this paper, the research question enquires whether there are commonplace digital processes in organizations that can be automated. If yes, then which technologies are used on a regular basis to automate the processes. The conducted literature review helped to distinguish three categories of standard digital processes suitable for automation – Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based processes (written and spoken), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and processes of searching for specific information. The empirical research was conducted using the CATI questionnaire in 2020 on 400 organizations which use cloud computing for daily routines. The results indicate that the identified processes are indeed subject to automation, and organizations use bots for RPA most (27.5%), and voice chatbots least (3.75%). The use of bots is also shown to be statistically dependent on a company’s scope and size.

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Streszczenie: W opracowaniu postawiono tezę, że określone kategorie komunikowania się technologicznego powinny być określane innymi cechami efektywności. Celem opracowania jest zatem wyodrębnienie rodzajów technologicznego wspomagania komunikacji wewnętrznej oraz wskazanie właściwych mierników efektywności każdego ze wskazanych rodzajów. Do realizacji celu opracowania posłużono się metodą analizy, a następnie syntezy. Za podstawę kategoryzacji służy tutaj macierz Ellis, Gibbsa i Reina (1991) opisująca cztery typy interakcji komunikacyjnych. Stosownie do nich w drodze analizy szczegółowej wyodrębniono i zidentyfikowano adekwatne rodzaje i sposoby komunikacji. Następnie, zależnie od rodzajów komunikacji, przedstawiono kryteria oceny efektywności ze względu na ich specyfikę, co pozwoliło, za pomocą syntezy, wyodrębnić cechy efektywności właściwe typom komunikacji. Na koniec wskazano przykładowe narzędzia technologiczne wspomagające określone typy komunikacji.