Building a real estate operation is all about relationships—and referrals. Getting good word-of-mouth is crucial. If you don’t give outstanding customer service, maybe your clients won’t complain to their friends and associates about it—but they won’t tell them how great you are to work with, either. Not getting talked about at all will be just as bad for your business as client complaints in the long run. The cost can be great in terms of your bottom line.
Avoid bad customer service in real estate by paying attention to the details.
Different real estate agents have different techniques for establishing themselves as a byword for good service in their respective markets, but they all seem to agree that bad customer service boils down to paying insufficient attention to the individual client. A client who feels that you’re inattentive will fire you and go elsewhere—and will tell other potential clients that you’re a “do-nothing.” To avoid that label is fairly simple—but it means putting in longer hours and keeping each client in your thoughts.
Blair Myers, who heads Team Blair in the Atlanta area, has built his business largely by keeping a high profile—but he warns other agents that getting noticed is just the first step. After that, you have to keep following through.
“It’s difficult to measure the cost of not providing the best service,” he says, “but it can ruin you. The post-closing follow-up is necessary. I recently had to counsel one of my agents who hadn’t done that for the client. The client called me, a week after the closing, to complain that this or that hadn’t been done to the house as had been agreed. I had to tell the agent, ‘If it had been my customer, I’d have followed up with a closing gift—something small, like toilet paper and towels. That’s your chance to shine, to plug yourself, to make sure the client has what she needs.’
“Even if the whole transaction went incredibly well, follow up. Three months later is far too late. Do it right away. Phone the client and ask, ‘Have you moved in yet? Do you need any professionals? Can I do anything for you?’ If the client has moved in and is happy, congratulate her and ask her to give you a plug. Because I follow up in this way, I don’t have to do much prospecting for clients.”
In every transaction, Myers says, you should look for ways to make the process easier for the client. This is especially important if he or she has unusual challenges, such as a physical disability. Another important function of the agent is to serve as the client’s eyes and ears.
“In one case,” he recalls, “the client had already moved out of the house, and the trees in her yard were growing out, overhanging into the neighbor’s yard. I didn’t just email her about the problem: I drove to the house and took pictures, sent her those, looked for professionals who could take care of the problem, got multiple bids, and forwarded all that information to the client. Then it was up to her.”
The agent’s job, says Myers, is to give clients the information they need to make decisions. The homebuyer or seller has more facts available than ever before; bad customer service is when the agent fails to put those facts into a context that applies to a certain home in a certain neighborhood.
Make sure your clients never feel neglected.
Barbara Fox, founder and CEO of Fox Residential Group, which specializes in luxury apartments in New York City, says that the only customer service mistake she’s ever made (and probably still does, at times, she admits) is a lack of attention to the client.
“I’m stretched thin, and sometimes something slips through the cracks, but the mistake I try never to make is lack of follow-up,” she says. “You’re only a client’s broker as long as you’re in her face, as long as she knows that you’re working on her case. Once you stop being attentive, they’ll move on to someone else. If they’re actively looking to buy or sell, you should be on it every day, being as persistent as they need you to be.”
Sometimes something slips through the cracks, but the mistake I try never to make is lack of follow-up.
Fox agrees with Myers that failure to put information into context for the client is bad customer service in real estate. Buyers don’t always know what they want, she notes; frequently they think they want something that they don’t really want.
“You have to work with the boundaries of reality,” she says. “You show them what they think they want, and they usually get disillusioned. You subtly, maybe without even speaking, veer them off to something else. One client wanted a particular neighborhood; no other would do. But there was nothing there that would suit her. I asked her to look at a property in another neighborhood; she refused. I said, ‘Humor me.’ She bought the property.
“You know when you lose a client, and you should be astute enough to figure out why.”
McKissock Learning is the nation’s premier online real estate school, providing continuing education courses and professional development to hundreds of thousands of real estate agents across the country. As part of the Colibri Real Estate family of premier education brands, McKissock Learning, along with its sister schools Real Estate Express, Superior School of Real Estate, Allied Schools, The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing, Gold Coast Schools, The Rockwell Institute and Hondros Education Group, helps real estate professionals achieve sustainable success throughout each stage of their real estate career. Learn more at mckissock.com/real-estate.
