Whether you’ve been in the real estate industry for months or years, you’ll agree that building, buying, selling, renovating, or managing a property is complicated.
All these facets of the real estate business come with unique challenges that property owners must overcome to succeed.
You must master the art of customer satisfaction and success if you wish to remain relevant in the real estate industry for a long time.
You have to learn how to manage customer expectations and be able to answer their questions satisfactorily anytime they seek help if you are to win their trust.
Below, we’ll look at some of the proven tips for customer service success that you can employ to expedite your real estate business growth.
Respond Faster
Like in any other industry, clients need quick and accurate answers to their real estate queries anytime they interact with your business.
Maintaining timely and helpful responses can give you an edge against the competition and set you up as an authority in the industry.
Doing this alone can be challenging, especially if you have multiple properties to manage. The rising demands from customers may force you to keep up late or be available on the phone or by email beyond regular business hours.
The best way to ensure efficient customer management is to incorporate effective customer relationship management (CRM) practices, including a robust customer call management system that can answer calls for landlords.
As the property owner, you won’t need to be available throughout the time to provide efficient answers when you have a reliable system in place.
The system will ensure your customers’ needs are met on time, giving them an assurance of safety and security as they choose your property over others in the market.
Exercise Empathy
Maybe empathy isn’t a common attribute in the real estate industry, but if you wish to stand out, you must embrace it.
Train your customer management team and any other employees to always exercise empathy by putting themselves in the customer’s shoes to understand their approach and perspective.
Many property owners or real estate employees tend to lose touch with client needs, especially after staying for a long time with consistent success.
For instance, if you’ve successfully been selling and buying property, you may be accustomed to having customers who underplay minor concerns when negotiating a property purchase.
However, a few clients may air out their concerns on those very areas that others ignore, and without empathy, you may not understand their point of view and lose them.
If you engage with your clients’ emotional needs, you’re more likely to understand their feelings and know when they’re comfortable with everything.
Once you know what concerns your customers, respond from their point of view, letting them know it’s not only they who feel that way.
This can give them the confidence to continue with the business, knowing you understand their needs and pains.
Build Long-Term Relationships
Investing in real estate is often considered a long-term investment that continues to earn you passive and active income through renting out or property flipping.
To continue earning from your investments, you’ll need reliable, long-term relationships that can sustain your growth and expansion.
Every customer transaction you make today should be treated as an investment in the future, with bigger opportunities for growth.
You should encourage a customer-centric approach that sees each client interaction as an opportunity for building long-term rapport and trust.
Customers are more likely to return or refer someone to you if they’re treated with respect and attention.
You should also strive to understand your clients’ long-term goals, so you can align them with your business’s and grow together towards those goals.
Listen to Your Customers Actively
You don’t want your company to have the reputation of only hearing and not listening to what the customer is saying.
Just hearing the content of a message doesn’t always guarantee you’ll fully grasp what the speaker is trying to communicate.
If your customers feel they’re not accurately understood, they might go somewhere else where their concerns and needs are perfectly understood.
To ensure active listening, train your customer support team to avoid distraction or listening with an aim to reply instead of listening to understand.
Emphasize the importance of employees giving the customers undivided attention and being present in the conversations they hold together.
Remind everyone of the need to turn their phones to silent when speaking to a client and to avoid any distractions during that moment.
Customer support and representatives can adopt effective communication practices and postures like leaning forward when talking to generate interest, attention, and engagement.
Offering your full attention ensures you don’t miss out on crucial information and prepares you to solve your client’s problems.
Fit Into Your Client’s Schedule
Your clients are your reason for survival and success in the real estate business. Sometimes, because of the nature and value of the transactions you’re engaging in with them, they might hesitate to make some decisions.
This means they may need some more time to carefully review the property and amenities before transacting.
In such cases, the one to two hours they get off work at lunchtime might not suffice in scrutinizing the property.
You can adjust your schedule to accommodate theirs if you wish to give them adequate time for viewing the property and making the right decision.
Doing this might mean some employees work more hours than others to meet the client’s expectations.
You can consider compensating the person remaining behind with a bonus on top of the payment for the extra work hours, especially when they convince clients to buy.
If getting someone to remain behind is a challenge, you can set up an emergency line for client issues that can’t wait until business is open the next day.
You can use an autoresponder to answer all late calls coming in, but direct clients to call a provided number if their case is an emergency. This way,you get fewer disruptions when business is already closed.
Success in the real estate industry is mostly about recognizing that success is about the people behind the transactions and not just about numbers.
You can have a few high-quality customers who return and refer your business to their friends and relatives.
On the other hand, you may have a whole lot of customers who aren’t offered quality attention and are always feeling sidelined.
his might not give you the best returns on your investment and can impede your business growth.
