Have you ever purchased a property or dreamt about investing in one?

Buying a new home is not an impulse purchase and when it comes to making the big commitment, customer experience is a key decision driver for investors, sellers and end-users alike. In an industry that is built on a long-term relationship, bolstering your customer satisfaction levels will not be enough anymore.

Companies who optimize their CX simply just to support customer satisfaction are selling themselves short. To keep your value proposition on the market it is imperative to offer a superior experience if you want to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

To create real customer loyalty, you cannot just meet expectations, but must look beyond the satisfactory interactions, and consider how to provide delight, connection and meaningful memories.

Many property management leaders tend to invest fortunes in the latest technologies, snappy designs or boosting their marketing campaigns in one way or another, yet so many customers are disappointed as companies forget the most important thing – customer centricity.

Are you unsure how to provide a great experience that is customer-centric? Let us help you out. Here are a few points to get you started.

It's all about putting your customers first

Helping potential homeowners and property investors travel the long road towards finding their dream home can be a difficult process as some projects may potentially take years rather than months to finish. When it comes to buying a property, customer centricity is not just about offering great customer service but offering a sense of a personalized journey from the very first stage of awareness, through the purchasing process and the construction phases, and finally throughout the living experience. Only a handful of real estate companies and developers are able to translate this kind of focus due to the lack of information they have about their customers.

The secret ingredient is to collect a significant amount of data about your customers from the very first moment of interaction, know their history, their patterns and behaviors, their attitude and motivators in order to anticipate their needs and enhance your services around these needs throughout their journey. Populating your data, keeping it up-to-date and spreading it across your business verticals will give you the tools to put the customer at the core of your business and provide a more personalized and consistent experience across all touchpoints.

The human touch

Let's not forget about the fact that your customers are not just pieces of information in a database. In our day-to-day work routine, responding to a request should not just be another task to tick off from our to-do list, and it's imperative to remind ourselves that our focus should revolve around the customers at all times – all day, every day. We all faced situations where we received a promotional e-mail after a big purchase or had to recite the same story all over again to a customer care agent – wasting our valuable time and energy – or where we received inconsistent service that let us down, made us feel helpless, neglected or frustrated. Put yourself in your customers' shoes. Interactions like these will give your customers a great reason to question your company's credibility and commitment to them and will send them looking for better alternatives. But there's more to this.

Understanding what your customers go through is only the tip of the iceberg. Identifying the most sensitive touchpoints give you the perfect opportunity to be different and make a long-lasting impact. In order to successfully leverage on them you have to proactively create carefully designed experiences to ensure their loyalty to your company or brand. Here's where personal touches come into the picture.

“Identifying the most sensitive touchpoints give you the perfect opportunity to be different and make a long-lasting impact." — Melinda Meskula

Personal touches are not only memorable but can also improve the experience. Let's look at an example of a homeowner who is just about to move in to her dream home. Imagine the anticipation and the excitement she's going through and how you could elevate this moment, or better yet, create an unconscious link between your brand and this exciting time in her life. So, why don't you kickstart your relationship with your customer by sending her a personalized gift pack, with all the potential information she may need after moving in and a few coupons for the supermarkets, food delivery services or gyms around her community. Even if you can only budget for a smaller gift, go for a meaningful one that is tailored around your customer's needs and wants, and current circumstances.

Use any chance and opportunity you have to engage with customers and nurture the relationship – another good idea would be to schedule an automated, but personalized e-card to your customer on her birthday or moving anniversary.

In short, just meeting customer expectations is likely not enough to keep them coming back to you, you have to make your customers feel that they are appreciated and cared for, while maintaining the human touch in your everyday interactions and providing customer-centric services.

Communication is still key

It is the intended result of the complete process of presentation of textual material in order to communicate meaning.

Speaking about automation – this technology can help you in many ways. By automating your everyday workflows and streamlining processes, your team will be able to spend more valuable time focusing on customer communications the right way.

Investing in a property – especially when purchased off-plan – can be a very long and exhausting process. So, throughout this journey, you need to ensure that you constantly keep your customers informed about the latest news and updates in order to alleviate this anxiety. You can do this by increasing transparency (i.e. by sharing information about the construction progress) and ensuring that they receive the right amount of engagement.

Listen to your customers. Invest in preparing detailed manuals, infographics or FAQ-s based on questions you received in the past from your previous customers, and proactively share this information with your current clientele, so that potential homeowners can get the answers they might be looking for without having to ask for it. Anticipate their wishes rather than just responding to them. Create engaging marketing content, blog posts or EDM newsletters on topics that can be important to your customers – i.e. information that is related to certain development projects or highlights construction milestones reached together. Take a look at your website, your mobile platforms and your customer portals, evaluate if they are user-friendly and always ensure you are providing up-to-date content to your customers across all your channels.

“Most of us expect a same-day or immediate resolution of our concerns and we all prefer human interactions." — Melinda Meskula

Try to focus on cutting down your response time. Most of us expect a same-day or immediate resolution of our concerns and we all prefer human interactions. Speed, efficiency, knowledgeable teams and the empathy and trust they create during a conversation are all super critical components for helping your real estate business create a remarkable customer experience.

Bad experiences drive customers away faster than you think but their expectations keep on evolving. They are shaped by other industries, influenced by word of mouth and manipulated by the digital landscape.

CX is the core of the value chain in the real estate industry. If you give your customers a great experience it will fuel the long-term growth of customer relationships. They will be loyal to your brand and will be sharing their positive memories with their friends and family members.

Keep in mind – customer experience is everything. Are you doing everything you can to get it right?

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