The number of conversations where home buyers voice their dissatisfaction with their choice in realtor is growing.
A component of these conversations is that realtors who are not focused on customer service don’t show up to the home inspection with their clients. This allows home buyers to talk more openly about their experience. I have also had more than a few people tell me their story about a bad home inspection. Which begs the question: Why aren’t home buyers always choosing the best realtor or home inspector? A helpful tool in answering this important question is by understanding a home buyer’s need for both Customer Experience and User Experience.
Providing the best possible service in today’s world can be easier today with advanced technology, but it has to include a focus on User Experience! This arena of User Experience is where I see the best realtors losing market share. The best realtors have been primarily focused on Customer Experience (keeping the client’s best interests as the primary concern) possibly even avoiding fancy tech upgrades because it is represents the antithesis of their core values, self-promotion. Couple that attitude with a new market of home buyers who appear to be replacing Customer Experience with User Experience and you have a recipe for disaster. There are a couple lessons here: technological advance without a focus on User Experience is self-promotion; tunnel vision on Customer Service at the detriment of User Experience is perceived by the market today as not trust-worthy.
In order to stay competitive in this market, overly saturated with service providers (newly licensed realtors and inspectors), educating clients on your competitive advantages providing both excellent Customer Experience and User Experience is paramount. Magnolia for example is focusing on better User Experience for realtors by providing a phone app for scheduling (with the ability to review schedule openings and reserve a spot, while verify the time) and a software program included to automatically create a repair addendum directly from the report. However, forcing potential home buyers to read as opposed to watching videos of the owner or employees talking about our services may give the impression that we don’t care about User Experience. We all have room for improvement! Promoting your User Experience advantage is a difficult topic, to be covered in the next blog!
