Crew lead Jen Berbas writes that making an allowance for the consumer perspective and expertise at each stage of the transaction lets you optimize their course of and consequence.
This submit was up to date Sept. 30, 2024.
Recently our group has been fascinated with tips on how to elevate our consumer expertise much more. How will we create a luxurious actual property customer support expertise on par with that of a Michelin four-star restaurant or a five-star lodge? We’ve got been studying books on hospitality and debating what we will incorporate into our consumer expertise to ship luxurious customer support.
The place do you even begin? There have been a number of books on the subject, and naturally, we will go searching for examples of exceptional hospitality that encourage us. How did that maitre d’ know our names at that four-star Michelin restaurant? (Google — your picture is on there. Belief me.)
We watched the employees at The Breakers to see precisely what stability they strike: They’re heat and join with visitors with out too many private particulars. How do they deal with my husband prefer it’s his birthday when he dumped his eggs benedict throughout a ridiculously beautiful rug? (True story.) By giving him the advantage of the doubt and being extremely constructive.
As we discover hospitality ideas and what units exceptional service aside, we preserve returning to a easy concept: Unimaginable hospitality comes all the way down to heat and reference to our purchasers, permitting us to anticipate their wants and emotions earlier than they know they’ve them. Empathy.
The system
After we first developed our purchaser and vendor processes a number of years in the past, we began with the premise that we needed to anticipate any query a consumer may need earlier than they even requested it. We put ourselves of their footwear and used their questions to grasp their emotions higher.
Our objective was to take away any anxiousness our purchasers could have whereas going via a course of that’s totally international to them and inherently excessive stakes. As we had been constructing this course of, we used consumer questions as a immediate to enhance our communication contact factors, overlaying generally requested questions lengthy earlier than the consumer would assume to ask them.
This shifted our communication cadence with our purchasers from a reactive state to a consistently proactive strategy, the place we led them via the method. Empathy helped us tailor our communication to the wants of every consumer. Understanding how the wants of a first-time homebuyer require each day contact factors throughout an inspection interval, and an government prefers the chief abstract, bullet level strategy.
For our patrons, this strategy meant at all times telling them what comes subsequent in order that they by no means need to guess, and for our sellers, this meant updating them on all of the work that’s taking place on their behalf within the background.
After we inform our sellers what we’re doing for them, we aren’t being self-serving and asking for compliments; we’re letting them know each stone is being turned over on their behalf in order that they by no means need to surprise or fear if sufficient is being executed. “Please don’t worry about getting a new doormat; we will take care of that.”
It’s type to provide them the small print of your efforts to keep away from any pointless anxiousness on their half.
Views
It’s straightforward to see how empathy with our purchasers’ views and their expertise may create a luxurious buyer expertise, however can empathy with our colleagues and the opposite celebration to the transaction enhance the expertise our purchasers have? Completely.
Empathy in negotiations helps us be higher negotiators. Consider this as negotiation jiu-jitsu. This may occasionally really feel counterintuitive to somebody with an aggressive negotiation model, however empathy can enable us to step into the footwear of the celebration we’re negotiating with and collaboratively give on the phrases which are much less necessary to our consumer and assist our purchasers prioritize the phrases which are extra necessary to them.
In any case, the objective of a negotiation is to not really feel such as you “won” the negotiation however to come back to an answer that works so that you can transfer ahead.
You symbolize a vendor, and the customer discovered mildew in the course of the inspection interval? Attempt to perceive their shock and the necessity for extra data. Enable the patrons just a few extra days to do their analysis and concentrate on the phrases which are extra necessary to the vendor, such because the gross sales value, somewhat than specializing in successful on minor phrases like timelines. You could win on the timeline and lose the customer, which isn’t within the vendor’s greatest curiosity.
If the opposite agent is hard, so be it. Preserve it to your self, don’t infect the transaction along with your emotions, and positively don’t react to it and spend your consumer’s goodwill. You by no means know what one other agent goes via; they might have had a combat with their partner or had a toddler despatched residence from college sick that day. In the event you can provide your colleagues the advantage of the doubt, you’ll keep away from expending your consumer’s goodwill, and chances are you’ll simply make a buddy for all times.
Good will
Our group considers goodwill in a transaction to be a type of foreign money, which isn’t ours to spend. Goodwill is the foreign money of the principals, and it’s solely theirs to spend on the contract phrases which are necessary to them.
Whereas serving to you create a five-star luxurious customer support expertise, empathy additionally lets you create a enterprise local weather the place your purchasers are more than likely to reach assembly their most necessary transaction objectives.
You may lengthen this luxurious service to your colleagues by having the grace to provide them the advantage of the doubt, which can elevate your purchasers’ expertise and provides them higher negotiation outcomes within the quick time period and bolstering your status for being a collaborative colleague your friends sit up for working with in the long run.
Jen Berbas is the group lead of the Berbas Group in Austin, Texas. Join together with her on Instagram and Linkedin.
