We sat down with Gertrud Kolb, Chief Technology Officer at Scout24, to hear how her team built a GPT‑5 powered search experience, what they learned about “intelligent interaction,” and how they balanced innovation with quality and trust before launch.

Scout24’s first priority was search—the core function of its platform. But as the team began prototyping with OpenAI they realised that customers wanted more than improved results. They wanted guidance. “We saw very quickly it’s not only about search. We needed a real-estate expert assistant—a sparring partner—which guides you through the whole platform experience” said Gertrud.

This insight led to a conversational assistant that can ask clarifying questions, surface relevant listings, summarize options, and adapt the answer format to the user’s needs. Some people want bullet points; others want full summaries; others want listings immediately. Understanding “what intelligent interaction really means” became one of the biggest challenges.

Scout24 also had to find the right technical architecture. Early ideas leaned towards a complex multi-agent framework, but the team intentionally simplified: using function calling and focused components so they could ship quickly and learn from users. Latency, relevance, performance, and the structure of answers became central themes.