It’s been a year since we moved into our ‘new’ house, but as with most people, I still keep an eye on the house market. I still receive the daily e-mails from various property websites, and I still notice that houses by one estate agent tend to get sold within a week or two, while other estate agents seem to struggle.
Why is this? Why should one estate agent have such an amazing strike rate? Everywhere I go, I see their red signs plastered with “SOLD” while other estate agents are forced to reduce the prices of their properties in order to make a sale. I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re not just marketing experts, they’re CRM experts.
The art of finding the right people
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The first time I came across this estate agent was on viewing a perfectly presented house with five sheds (yes, five) at the bottom of the garden. The wood burner was on, the house was impeccable, and we wanted a second viewing, even though the house was slightly above our maximum threshold. However, there was no chance of a second viewing, as an offer had been made on the first day, and it had been accepted.
Well, it was a nice house. But the same thing happened several times over, and we started to wonder whether there wasn’t something else at play here. Each time, a succession of people were brought in, five minutes after the other, giving the impression of demand.
But it wasn’t necessarily demand – it was a case of finding the right people. This estate agent took the time to get to know you. They asked plenty of probing questions, but they were going through a checklist in order to better understand your housing needs. And those needs were clearly conveyed to a central database, because every call we received about a house – every e-mail we received – was about a house we would have liked.
They had other houses, but from the conversation, they clearly understood the need for data, and ran that into their CRM so that when a new house came onto the market, they could run a match against the particularities of that house and come up with a target list of families or individuals who would be most interested.
The art of great customer service
How nice is it when an estate agent calls you up? OK, not very nice. But what if it’s always the same estate agent, and they know you? What’s more, they remember everything about you… your daughter’s name, the area you’re searching, the size of house you want, the fact that you want a veg patch at the back of the garden? All of that.
And they say “I think I’ve found the perfect house for you”. If they hadn’t already established their knowledge of you as a customer, that might sound false, but with this background, you start to believe they have found the perfect house.
This is the art of great customer service, but it derives from the art of great CRM usage. If that data is maintained, and kept up to date, and each viewing, whether successful or unsuccessful, is fed back into the system, then the estate agent is armed with a wealth of information that feeds back into the call.
The art of evangelism and enthusiasm
Enthusiasm’s a difficult thing to nurture. You can’t just expect enthusiasm to suddenly ‘happen’, it has to be worked on. This applies to CRM; if there is a broken link within the chain, the end result (great customer service, increased conversions) is affected.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that the estate agent in question is a real evangelist for CRM, and that bleeds through the organisation, from top to bottom. Everyone is an evangelist – everyone is enthusiastic – and everyone has an input. From the person who takes the initial call from someone saying “I’m looking for a house” or “I want to sell my house”, they know what data to collect, where to put it, and how to interpret it.
They know the importance of good, clean, correct data and the impact it can have on the end result. They know the value of their CRM and how it can improve the customer experience, and that’s why they sell their houses so quickly.
You might also like:
6 Great Examples of Customer Service http://www.thinkaboutcrm.com/6-great-examples-customer-service
7 Deadly Sins of Customer Service http://www.thinkaboutcrm.com/6-great-examples-customer-service
Simple tips of a Great Customer Service http://www.thinkaboutcrm.com/great-customer-service
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