We cannot read a customer’s mind, any more than we can read our partner’s mind, but that expectation – however unrealistic – is often part of both personal and business relationships.
One way to overcome this distortion with a customer is through customer profiling – that is by gathering data about the customer, as well as feedback from them, that can provide insight to improve your ability to serve them.
There are several other benefits that emerge from customer profiling. Here are a few to consider.
Marketing
While the profile of one customer can help you target your services better to an individual, profiling all of your customers can provide deep insight for the marketing team.
Title agents often focus their advertising on the services and level of expertise they offer for various segments of the real estate industry. But profiling helps your marketing team dig beneath the facts and figures to create marketing pieces that appeal to the emotional aspect of the real estate transaction.
The emotional impact you had on a customer is one of the jewels that can emerge from in-depth profiling that incorporates your customer’s feedback as well as data. Your customers will tell you what made them feel good – or bad – in the course of using your title, escrow and closing services and that intelligence can provide a wealth of insight for creating future marketing campaigns.
Empowering your staff
You’ve probably heard frustrated staff say, “There’s no pleasing some people!”
Employees at your agency know how hard they work, and the many steps involved in the process, but that doesn’t mean the customer knows it. Profiling can help your support team:
- Understand how to better communicate with the customer at important junctures
- Identify what information or reassurance the customer needs or wants from your staff
- Educate customers on aspects of the process they may not understand
Profiling can give you a glimpse into the minds of your customers so that your staff can more effectively create an environment of openness and transparency that improves the overall experience and diminishes stress and misunderstandings.
Customer acquisition and retention
You know the drill. It is more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. If your customer feels understood and well served, you are far more likely to retain that customer for future transactions and profiling gives you a leg up on being able to do just that.
Profiling also helps you understand what customer you should go after in your advertising and marketing efforts. Customer feedback can highlight where you excel, and this can help you focus on the types of customers and transactions that are your sweet spot.
And remember, Alanna is here to help you take the valuable data you collect and turn it into more effective communications with your real estate agents, buyers and sellers, improving response time and freeing staff for more complex production or client service tasks. Call us today to learn more!