How Real Estate Agents Can Improve Their Customer Service Skills

Due to the competitive nature of the real estate industry, agents will need to improve on customer service to distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Whether working with home sellers or buyers, agents should prioritize their client’s needs while building lasting relationships. Besides being knowledgeable about the home buying/selling process and the real estate market, agents should be responsive to their client’s concerns and needs, communicative, and empathetic.

Providing great customer service will help agents build better customer relationships, boost customer satisfaction, and increase the customer retention rate.

This article explores why real estate agents need to improve their customer service skills to differentiate themselves from competitors and enjoy business success. Read to the end!

Tips for Improving Customer Service

The real estate industry thrives on effective customer service. Thus, how long you support your clients and work hard determines your level of success in this field. 

If you’re looking for solutions to improve customer service, start by assembling an excellent customer service team. According to Salesforce research, 78% of clients will patronize a business again due to great customer service. 

The following are expert customer service tips for real estate agents to increase brand recognition:

• Follow Up Leads Fast

Due to the competitive nature of the real estate industry, you need to focus on improving your team’s customer service skills to stand out from other realtors. 

If you’re a large real estate brokerage, you can create a team of customer service agents to follow up on leads quickly while offering a positive customer service experience. 

A customer relationship management (CRM) tool will help you track your customer contact history and new leads to ensure your real estate agents provide your clients with their specific needs.

A customer relationship management tool helps agents automate their processes to improve customer service interactions and manage their sales pipeline.

• Build Trust With Clients

Whether your client is renovating, renting, or purchasing, having excellent customer service skills is necessary to make them refer your agency to their friends and families.  

Studies found that only 11% of individuals could trust a real estate agent completely. Therefore, building trust with clients will ensure smooth real estate transactions.

• Maintain Constant Communication

One of the ways to improve customer service is to maintain constant communication. Effective customer service begins with constantly communicating essential information.

Your customer service teams must learn to speak effectively, confidently, and clearly while addressing customer concerns. Besides face-to-face communication, you need to communicate effectively using other means like social media, email, or phone calls. 

You can also share your experiences through blog content on your website or social media posts to allow your audience and site visitors a glimpse into the real estate transaction process. 

• Provide Clients With Information

Your client has the right to be updated with upcoming transactions and contracts. First-time buyers and sellers feel less confused and more empowered when they learn how the process works, including the potential choices, alternatives, and options they might get from agreements. 

You can improve customer satisfaction and earn their loyalty by allowing them to discover how they can profit from these generally unknown details.

• Accommodate Client Schedules

If you’re wondering how to improve customer service skills, accommodate your client’s schedules to ensure they’ll be available for showings and open houses. The real estate transaction process takes lots of time and thought. 

Although your client might squeeze out an hour or so, it won’t be enough to view a home or finalize renovation plans. Therefore, you might have to meet with your clients outside work. 

While it’s hard to supervise your staff, ensure employee satisfaction, and work around clients’ schedules, managing these tasks excellently will lead to happy customers. 

• Create a USP

Your Unique Selling Point (USP) is the marketing tactic showing your clients the benefits they’ll get from hiring you as their real estate agent and how you’ll respond to their needs.

You can use print and digital marketing channels to create a compelling USP. For instance, while updating your social media account or website, consider sending real estate brochures to your potential clients regularly to remind them of your services.

Understanding your client’s needs, keeping them updated with your unique services, and describing your business’s special features will help promote your marketing campaigns.

• Timely Responses

One guaranteed way to provide better customer service is to respond promptly to clients’ queries. Clients appreciate prompt, responsive service in today’s fast-paced world. 

By being responsive, you quickly answer phone calls and emails from clients beyond office hours. That way, you build confidence and trust by demonstrating availability.

A great CRM tool will help you respond fast and manage customer interactions. Your client will feel secure when you’re always available when they need you, forging a bond that eventually leads to brand loyalty.

• Make Real Estate Transactions for Clients

One of the tips for improving customer service skills is to help your customers make transactions throughout their home sale or purchase. You can set reminders to help them know when to make payments for a process or come for an open house. 

Also, connect with them on social media to make your customers happy by creating posts that address their needs. Understanding your client’s needs will enable you to learn their search behaviors, helping you become active on their preferred social media platforms.

• Anticipate Clients Needs

A great realtor easily knows their client’s needs and makes plans to provide them in advance. Professional agents don’t assume or wait for their clients to mention their preferences. 

Hence, it’s essential to coordinate your customer service representatives and CRM systems to predict your client’s needs ahead of time. When you fulfill your client’s wish before they mention it, it shows how you value them, leading to positive reviews. 

Constantly interact with them with care and tact and avoid giving them incorrect information or making false promises. If your client discovers you misled them, it can damage their loyalty to your brand.

• Offer Professional Consultations 

If you’re looking for how to improve your customer service skills, offer professional consultations. When clients come to you for help, make helpful suggestions to easily resolve the issues.

For instance, if your client is a home seller seeking tips to improve the property’s marketability, you can suggest sprucing the home appearance or staging the house before taking professional photographs.

Alternatively, if a home buyer requests your opinion on the buying process, you can offer valuable insights on their preferred home price and how to get financing for the property. 

Giving professional and honest answers to your customer questions will ensure you receive only positive customer feedback. This customer feedback from your support team will help you improve your customer service strategy. 

• Gift Your Clients 

Remembering private details about your clients, such as their anniversaries and birthdays, and giving them gifts helps build loyalty. Your clients will feel valued and return for more of your services or even send you referrals.

• Establish a Strong Online Presence

Since we’re in the digital age, agents must maintain a strong online presence to connect with customers and address customers concerns. Social media has become a necessary but effective real estate marketing strategy for savvy realtors. 

A static online presence will significantly affect your sales since more than 4 billion people use social media. Posting only your listings online isn’t enough. You need to have good customer service skills to resolve customer issues efficiently.  

Since your potential customers spend more time on social media, you need to build a strong online presence to discover their needs, learn their search habits, and showcase your expertise on popular social media platforms.

Importance of Effective Customer Service for Real Estate Agents

Customer service entails interacting with clients/customers by fulfilling their demands and needs through the business’s products and services. Therefore, good customer service performance is necessary to ensure your real estate agency’s success.

The following are reasons to improve customer service performance:

1. Increase Loyalty of Customers

Data from Microsoft shows that 96% of clients/customers consider customer service a vital factor in putting their loyalty to a brand. Therefore, you need to improve your customer service skills to build loyalty. 

To avoid poor customer experience, set up a team of customer service professionals. Your clients are satisfied if your business’s customer service rating is high. Once the rating is consistent, customer loyalty starts building. 

Thus, establishing customer loyalty is one of the most crucial company branding tips.

2. Build Strong Relationships

Real estate relationships between buyers and sellers aren’t one-and-done deals. To succeed in the real estate industry, you need to build long-lasting relationships and train your customer service rep to avoid poor customer service experience. 

Finding new leads becomes easier when you have a strong relationship with your clients because they’ll easily refer friends and families to patronize your product or service. 

3. Increase Productivity

Great customer service can improve your real estate business productivity by quickening your company’s operations and drawing in more clients through referrals leading to increased potential profit and revenue.

4. Helps Your Marketing Efforts

Marketing or advertising your business will be unfruitful if you don’t have great customer service. A survey by Gartner.com shows that customer experience is the basis for competition by 89% of existing companies in the market.  

Thus, exceptional customer service is important for every real estate agent. If you’re struggling with marketing your real estate business, outsource your real estate marketing to leading digital marketing companies like Ardor SEO. Ardor SEO specializes in local real estate SEO to improve your web traffic and visibility. 

FAQs

Final Words

Great customer service is crucial to the success of real estate agents. You can build rapport with your clients by teaching your team members and team leaders to offer customers the best services, leading to positive referrals and more business.

The ability to meet your client’s needs and exceed expectations, clear communication, positive language, and active listening are some elements of exceptional customer service that will ensure less negative feedback.

Real estate agents should commit to ongoing training in customer service to positively impact their customers’ lives and position themselves for success in the ever-evolving real estate industry. 

The goal of improving the customer service experience is to increase business performance and provide maximum support to clients during a significant transaction of their lives.

Icons of Real Estate works with the number 1 eXp team in the US the “The Short Term Shop”. We help real estate agents elevate their business to ICONIC new heights and we can help you too. Do you want to know how? Schedule a consultation with our team of experts today and get ready to turn up the deal flow and watch your sales grow!