What does your Landlord demographic look like?
Customer service and customer care - two phrases that are extremely important to the business owner. These two fundamental elements that define a business and if you lose sight of the importance of the customer, they will go elsewhere.
Competition in any industry is tough and in an age when the customer can jump straight on to social media and declare their disappointment, sometimes unwarranted, it’s easy for customers to go elsewhere.
So why it is important to focus on the customer, not just in terms of what the customer needs, but their journey and expectations? Do we know know enough about what that means?
It’s crucial to know your “customer demographic”, something organisations - private and public spend vast sums of money researching. They profile what this person or group of people “look like”. Not in the physical sense, more so in terms of behaviours. What kind of job do they have, do they drink, do they like a particular kind of coffee or biscuit? Cookies, not the edible kind, track consumer behaviours so that businesses can “target” the consumer based on their internet searches.
However, whilst PropTech is sophisticated, it doesn’t quite “profile” in that way. It matches people to property types, but it doesn’t match landlords/investors to letting agents. The landlord comes in different guises and therefore, the square peg definitely doesn’t fit in the round, and as such, different landlords have different expectations.
How important is Your Brand and Goodwill?
“Imitation is the best form of flattery” or so they say. When setting up a business or even if the business is established, it’s easy to get excited about a new idea or something innovative, so much so that there is a temptation to share it with the world before the idea is launched.
Remember those school days when copying someone’s work was frowned upon? Or lifting text word for word at University was an act that could end a student’s career? Plagiarism, copying ideas, using similar branding colours or logos, taking advantage of a director’s goodwill and stealing a database of clients or even copying and pasting text from a competitor’s website, happens every day in business but they are all unethical ways of trying to get ahead!
So how important is your Brand and Goodwill to your business? The reply should be “Extremely”
So how do you protect your Brand and Goodwill?
Lets start with the Goodwill element, the client loyalty you have built up over years. You can’t force the customer to stay loyal, yet they do for many reasons- exceptional customer service, quality of the product, price, dedicated staff - all this and more adds value to your business and allows you to build up a valuable clientele. But how do you protect your database? We recently published an article by Mint Insurance which focuses on Cyber Security. What does this have to do with your database? Your data has value and therefore for a member of staff hoping to leave and set up in competition, it’s useful to know how that data is protected, who has access to it and if it’s being “downloaded”. The details of landlords are precious to any agent, so think carefully about passwords protocols and security. Check your employment contracts in relation to data protection and theft of the database. Employers place restrictions on their employees for a reason.
Complaints can help your Business
Mistakes, errors, issues occur everyday in the business world and as a result complaints generally follow. It is, therefore, important to understand that no matter how big or small the complaints, this "feedback" is an indicator that something is wrong within the company. No one likes a complaint and no one individual relishes being complained about, yet as the old saying goes "it's not personal, it's business ".
How does a complaint make your company better?
1. Show your client that you have a mechanism to deal with complaints. This is not a "red rag to a bull", this illustrates professionalism. Within the Lettings industry all letting agents are required by Law to be a member of a Redress Scheme - either the Property Redress Scheme or The Property Ombudsman Service. This means that the consumer has a point of reference once the complaint has been dealt with by the Letting Agent and the outcome for the complainant does not feel satisfactory
2. Receive the complaint with grace. The default is to become defensive. Don't. Train your team to be gracious rather than angry when a customer puts in a complaint. Face the complaint with understanding, ask and find out as much information as you can. Remember- we are all consumers.
Are we held to Ransom by On Line Companies?
Love Love Love Tech. Love Gadgets. Love the new iPhone. Love Apps that allow us to monitor our sleep, wake us, order takeaway, order a cab, order our dry cleaning collection, order our shopping. Love the way in which technology helps us all navigate our ever increasingly busy lives. Loath the way that when it goes wrong, it really does impact our lives.