Although the primary focus has been in lead generation and core service opportunities, many firms also are involved in transition activities ranging from enhanced Internet effectiveness to aggressive risk management.
Overall, RECON Intelligence Services identified 28 specific areas of management transition activities.
To assist its clients with the operational challenges inherent in these activities, RECON studied the factors that might be common to all 28 areas. The results showed that the number one challenge is Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
Sixty-five (65%) percent of these challenges revolved around the nature and quality of the brokerage relationship with the customer - factors that will make the difference between success and failure.
Based on these findings, RECON has developed a brokerage-customer relationship development program to assist brokerage executives in keeping pace with transition demands. This article provides an executive summary of this new program’s basic elements.
Without question the single most important element in a CRM program is customer-centric data. To be effective, the firm’s CRM program must collect, package and distribute customer oriented performance measurements to those players responsible for the ongoing implementation.
The program must integrate information about every aspect of each service unit and every customer.
This information must be converted into measurements and knowledge management (KM) tools.
The whole purpose of CRM is to create the ultimate customer experience. Given the unique nature of the real estate experience, it seems obvious that the only way to deliver it is by creating the highest level of collaboration among all the core services that will contribute to the experience.
This is the secondary objective of the current move to a business format of multiple core services.
The next CRM program element requires firms to develop a much more enlightened and data-supported effort to understand their expenses, costs and margins.
Which sales activities create actual profit and which just drive the business model? Many brokerages are finding that effecting a transition from the traditional transaction and agent-oriented perspective is more difficult than previously imagined. This is due in part to the challenge of creating a management team that will use the new performance measuring tools discussed above.
From the customer’s viewpoint, value and consistency are the leading indicators of satisfaction.
Value cannot be measured on the basis of what one has always done or what one perceives should have value. Value is a “point of sale” commodity that must match each customer’s expectations at the time he or she employs the firm’s services.
The CRM program must assess the customer’s “lifetime value.” The traditional “get it closed and move on” focus is very shortsighted from a relationship management standpoint. Regrettably, the apparent assumption that the commission was the “last dollar” that would come out of the client is today a self-fulfilling prophecy.
An effective CRM program anticipates a long series of brokerage and customer interactions and will create an interactive model that will promote the longer-term profitability rather than the quick commission. The lifetime value concept must be a key driver for designing the best customer experience.
The effective real estate CRM program will use customer segmentation and mass customization (personalization) tactics. Demographic profiles and specific issues reflected in each customer’s profile would be used to select which specific services will be provided and how.
Effective CRM programs likely will mark the end of an era for the classic “universal agent” concept. Most industries have long since discovered that the range of skills, mindsets and competencies required for the perfect customer experience is simply too broad to be encapsulated in one person, especially without the benefit of mandatory, sophisticated and extensive training, backed up by tracking and monitoring.
Technology, long sold as the ultimate solution for firms looking for a shortcut to the “people” issues, will be but an enabler within the CRM system. While it is true that the program’s metrics and KM elements will depend upon both front and back office technology, the actual implementation will be very people oriented. Firms should avoid thinking that off-the-shelf CRM software packages will carry the day.
Finally and most importantly, the CRM program must include clear and definitive key profitability indicators (KPI) and specific return on investment (ROI) measurements. Accountability across a wide range of performance categories will be essential. Constant real-time monitoring of how well the CRM program’s elements and objectives are being met will be critical for its success.
“Getting to know you” is no longer a slogan to be slapped on a classified or Yellow page ad. Moving forward, it will be the critical component of transitioning the real estate brokerage to its next business and financial level. Say “yes” to customer relationship management.
