When you spend your whole day dealing with people in every conceivable mood a human can be, it’s easy to see the ‘person’ as a commodity, like cattle running through a stall. As a realtor that’s a dangerous trap to fall in. Whatever else you feel the ‘people’ aspect of business is what it’s really all about. Our business IS our customer, not the house, the sale or the other realtor, our business is the satisfaction of the customer. The rule we need to live by is that the customer is an individual. When we realise that, even though they are customer number 1,489, they still are customer number 1.
Keeping in mind that we are dealing with a number of individual clients, we have to remember the quality of our service will never exceed the quality of the person giving it. You may be having a tough negotiation, or running on the muffin we ate last Thursday and we still won’t have time to eat anything else till next Monday, or have more properties than you can shake a stick at, but that is not the fault of the customer. If you want that customer to come back, or refer friends and family, then the customer comes above the life of a realtor. Your level of service needs to be the top of your game for everyone, every time. Never forget the number one rule – the client is an individual.
If every client is an individual, do you know who they really are? Do you know why they want a particular room, or garden? When you do, you can offer solutions as friend to friend, and if the suggestion comes from a friend it’s more likely to be accepted. Good customer service comes from going the extra mile. Why not send a note when they get married, retire or have a new baby – after all it was the reason for the move.
One thing that really helps you become their friend Realtor agent is to give them to benefit of the doubt. You may have seen this 12 dozen times before, but they deserve to be given a chance. As you offer up these tender mercies, they will offer them back to you. Proving that he is wrong and you are right isn’t worth losing a sale over – or your good name.
If a customer asks for something unusual, or that requires a bit more effort, try everything you can to help them. Sure it’s going to make you already complex life more complicated, but the dividends are that you buy good will. The fact that they thought enough of you to ask means they feel that they can.
Good customer service isn’t about making money off one sale, it’s about repeat business. You want your name on the tip of their tongue when they are asked about Realtors. You want your client to talk about your services and how you are the one their friends and family need. If your client is asked, what you want is for them to tell people about YOU. How helpful you were, how you made them feel, hoe you worked so hard. With all this going on it’s easy to forget, but this is one thing that must never slip your mind – companies don’t sell houses, people like you do.
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