THE NEW NORMAL: it’s about building relationships and giving real customer service

The ICG network came together recently to talk about the art of building personal relationships with clients and providing services that offer real value to the customer. In a live webinar, leading PropTech and PropService suppliers were joined by top estate agents to provide industry insights, information and expert views to help estate agents move forward in the ‘new normal’ post-COVID property market.

Building relationships

Andy Solomon from customer experience specialists Yomdel urges estate agents to “think like your customers”.  He reminds them that when buyers, vendors, tenants and landlords interact with an agency, their primary focus is on their own needs and concerns.  From a lettings perspective, Andy is concerned that some agents tend to undervalue their tenants, pointing out that tenants are “tomorrow’s buyers and vendors.  People who have networks of friends and relations.”

Iain White from Agency Mentors believes that some agents should take “a reality pill in terms of what they think they are delivering.”  As the process of selling a property is often unfeasibly slow and can be fraught with problems, agents should never be complacent about the customer experience.

Nick Neill of EweMove agrees that it’s vital to make a personal connection.  He points out that although large chains such as Your Move cover the whole of the UK, “when you look at customer reviews, it’s the person who dealt with the customer that gets mentioned.”

Long term gains

When building client relationships, the panel advises a long term approach. Andy Soloman notes that in Australia estate agents are “a bit like a family doctor”, getting passed down the generations with each successive rental, purchase and sale. 

“We’ve always been very customer-focused,” says lettings market innovator Kristjan Byfield of The Depositary. After 16 years in the lettings business, Kristjan has been rewarded by tenants returning to his company as landlords.  He also gives the example of a long-standing landlord who died, leaving an instruction in his will that his rental property should stay in the family, managed by Kristjan’s company.

First steps to the future

“The consumer is now more empowered than ever before,” says Andy Solomon, who advises agents not to imagine everything will still be the same when they emerge from “the COVID situation”.

Panel members are united in their view that the time is right to drop the hard sell, opting instead for a softer approach that offers genuine help to customers.  Heather Staff of instruction generation experts Spectre says that the pandemic has caused panic and concern amongst many customers. She feels there’s a real opportunity for agents to offer “courteous, sensitive advice” as we emerge from the crisis.  However “the tone and content need to be massively different than they would be in normal times.” 

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