Here is a thought leadership article from The Depositary
Delivering those ‘wow’ moments in private rentals, not just in a single element of customer service but throughout an exemplary customer experience (or journey), requires a personal touch. Delivering these truly personal touches takes time, consideration, and (often) planning.
However, there is no obvious tangible return on this activity and so, all too often, the perfunctory and the mundane elements of delivering the key elements of your lettings service take precedent above and beyond the marvellous.
‘So what?!’ I hear some of you agents say. ‘We are paid to do a job and, ultimately, that is what we do time and time again- take a transaction from A to Z!’. The trouble is, when you do this, that is all it is – a transaction.
It is usually no better or worse than a tenant’s or landlord’s last experience…but they chose you this time because the last agent they used delivered a result but little else. When you can’t differentiate your results and customer journey from the vast majority of other operations, you lose a narrative, a reason – and a relationship.
Delivering a marvellous customer journey (and to be clear- in my eyes, everyone who interacts with your business is a customer – even if they don’t know it yet) isn’t about a bottle of wine delivered with the keys, or a branded bicycle cover or anything tangible (although these things are fine) – it’s how you make them FEEL.
When a customer feels special and unique you create an advocate of your business with huge benefits…
- Free promotion – at every dinner party, office water-cooler moment, natter with the in-laws, etc., when someone moans about how horrendous their experience has been with their rental property or how average/awful their agent is, the customers you’ve impressed (your promoters) will advocate for you, without question and (most importantly for you) without cost or commission.
- Loyalty & Retention – if you position yourself as the font of all property knowledge, you will be that person’s ‘go-to expert’. Not only does this present an array of other revenue opportunities but also ensures that you are the 1 in 8 agents that gets instructed to re-sell the property you sold to them or that agent that still has its landlord client 10-15 years later.
- Real value – a feeling is not a tangible thing. You can quantify things in an agency – we sell/let for X% of market value, we sell/let in X weeks – but so what. People expect agents to do this stuff so how does that justify your real value? Give them an amazing experience and you can charge 2-3% for sales, you can charge 15-17% to let & manage (and I’m not including VAT in those fees), and you don’t have to fight to justify them!
It comes down to this: The only way any business can viably deliver this level of service and still be a viable business is to understand, incrementally, every part and element of every process. How you facilitate this and where a human adds value to that process/experience is critical. When you truly understand this, you can set about automating and/or outsourcing the mundane, freeing up your staff throughout the business to focus on delivering the marvellous.
If there is any process in your business that you haven’t looked at recently – it’s time to! The ‘we’ve always done it that way’ or ‘that’s just the way it’s done’ has never been a good excuse and, in the age of digital innovation, evolution, and customer experience should, quite frankly, be statements that are outlawed! So, what are you waiting for? Automate the mundane today so tomorrow your customers can scream ‘MARVELLOUS!
Hot Topics: watch the Silver Bullet interview
Who are The Depositary?
We are a fully responsive web-based app. Our product is an automated end-of-tenancy platform which kicks in at the point of notice being given or received and guides users, landlords, and tenants through to the deposit return.
We remove around 80% of admin related to the end of a tenancy, most of which has zero monetary value to agents and is just chasing people. Our platform streamlines processes and ensures compliance. Our clients have a dashboard of all concluding tenancies, giving easy at a glance updates and we deliver transparency to tenants in what is often a fraught and stressful time. All users, tenants and landlords can perform actions from any device, anywhere in the world. Built by agents, for agents.
Click here to view their exclusive deal for Kerfuffle members as well as check out their reviews
