The outside salesperson in most companies, particularly in the title insurance industry, has the most contact with the actual customer and often has the best insight into what the customer needs as well as what frustrations they experience in the course of a real estate transaction.
The challenge is how to get the voice of the customer into the heads of your title, escrow and closing staff in a way that motivates them to provide an elevated level of customer service and – more significantly – inspires them to become more proficient problem solvers.
Here are a few suggestions for increasing customer service by helping your employees connect the dots.
Customer feedback
Be creative in gathering customer feedback. For instance:
- Survey everyone attached to the transaction immediately after the closing
- Use your AI-powered virtual assistant – like, say, Alanna – to collect feedback from your customers via SMS text
- Establish a new communication channel between agents, buyers and sellers. We know of one AI virtual assistant who can certainly help!
- Have a strong presence on the Internet and invites customers to add reviews there
- Invite customers to join a focus group to explore a specific area of concern.
Similar to a focus group, you can assign your sales reps the task of exploring a single issue with customers – for instance exploring the most effective tactics for getting buyers and sellers to respond to requests for information. Arrange with your reps to meet weekly for a few weeks to share insights they have gathered and record all feedback.
Transmitting insight to staff
Gathering statistics is useless if you don’t act on the information to improve the business. Often, research gathered through reviews, surveys and sales reps reports rarely gets compiled into a useful body of knowledge, but that is a key step.
To make the data useful, it must be digested and analyzed, and then transmitted into action steps that can be shared internally.
However, before handing down a mandate to staff, it’s critical that the staff be given access to the real-life feedback that came from the customer. In essence, you want the customer’s voice to be in their heads in an empathetic way that inspires them to search for solutions that will improve the process for everyone.
Reward effort
After establishing a program for improving the customer experience through this method, you can double its effectiveness by finding ways to reward employees who push this initiative forward.
And it probably goes without saying that employees who are valued and respected in the workplace are much more likely to show that same consideration to your real estate agents, loan officers, home buyers and sellers. So, in addition to offering incentives, make sure you are creating a culture of compassion, listening and support that can be emulated with your customers.
Alanna offers a full complement of communications tools that your staff can employ to connect seamlessly with your customers to enhance the quality of the services you provide. Call us today to learn more.