In an industry where distrust is rampant and obtaining customer loyalty can be a struggle, agents should focus on one thing to gain an edge over their competitors: the way they make their customers feel.
To stand out and foster long-term relationships built on trust and loyalty, agents have been encouraged to turn their attention to customers’ successes, effort, and emotions, rather than just focusing on closing a sale.
According to Emergent founder and Australian keynote speaker, Holly Ransom, agents who strengthen their customer relationship skills are more likely to build lasting brand loyalty, retain clients through setbacks, and grow their referral networks.
Speaking at the Australasian Real Estate Conference (AREC), Ransom said that in any given interaction, people may forget what agents said, but they will never forget how they made them feel.
“What I love about this is that it starts not in a real estate insight but a human insight,” she said.
Ransom cited a study spanning 354 brands and 22 industries, which showed that three key components: successes, efforts, and emotions, made up the essence of customer experiences.
She said success was about whether agents achieved the customer’s desired outcome, such as selling the property for the right price.
“Did you get the job done? Did the customer get what they came for in a real estate sense? Did the property sell? Did they get the outcome they wanted?”
She said the second element, effort, was the difficulty of the transaction, including how many times the vendor had to follow up with the agent, and whether it was a smooth process.
The final component, emotion, referred to the way the agent made the vendor feel throughout the transaction.
According to Ransom, agents should consider the way they could implement each element throughout the entire process, from the first inquiry through to the inspection, auction day, and settlement.
“Think about where you’ve got the opportunity to distinguish yourself and earn that level of emotional engagement with the people that you are working with for loyalty, advocacy, the right to repair and certainly the right to return and continue serving business,” she said.
When it came to establishing positive customer connections, Ransom also emphasised the need for agents to slow down and be attentive to what was happening around them.
She said that to make a lasting impression, agents should actively listen to their customers, as attention to detail would always go a long way.
In one case, Ransom said that an agent went above and beyond when he discovered that the son of his seller was upset about moving overseas, as he would miss his soccer team.
After the family moved, the agent sent a parcel for the boy with a soccer ball inside, with a touching message saying he should join the local team in Atlanta, which made a long-lasting impression on the family.
Ransom said that the agent had paid attention to the emotional connection the child had to the property he had lived in and the difficulties of the transition out of it.
“That care and that attention made all the difference and distinguished the agent from the pack,” she said.
“Attention has a really important prerequisite, and that is presence. This agent was able to be attentive, not because of a better system – genuine attention is your greatest advantage.”
She noted that agents’ attention was usually diverted to various matters, receiving hundreds of messages, emails and calls per day.
“The amount of contacts and just the nature of your business, switching off, that is huge, we need to reset every three minutes. Once you get a ping of notification, it’s 23 minutes to refocus,” she said.
“We need to think about how we clear away everything that competes with your presence, or at least clear away something significant that competes with your presence to give the possibility of attentiveness a chance,” she said.
She said that by shifting their focus, agents can create opportunities for themselves to create a positive interaction with others.
“Paying attention to the right things in the age of overload, in the age of efficiency and optimisation is the edge,” she concluded.
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