Successful Consumer Experience Requires Broker-Agent Partnership

Three-quarters of the year of conferences and workshops have passed, and a common theme – out of many – has appeared. The industry's dive into the consumer journey in real estate is the epicenter of today's evolving business models.

How these business models deliver a unique consumer experience through the marketing technology stack (MarTech), requires that they solve the fragmented systems of consumer data and find consumers who only engage when addressed with the right message, at the right time, and within the right medium or channel.

Producing a personalized consumer experience through marketing needs actionable insights as collected in real-time from consumers' behavior and interaction on social media, website, call center, showings, banner advertising, phone calls, emails, and other online and offline channels. This consumer data builds an all-inclusive view of an anonymous or non-anonymous customer into a persistent profile.

Consumer profiles harvested from first-party data is the most valuable source of data to deliver a personalized consumer experience from a marketing campaign. Why? This data dictates how consumers interact with the marketing channels used by brokers and agents. Therefore, building strong partnership between brokerages and agents becomes more crucial than ever.

Benefits of a Broker-Agent Partnership in Their Marketing Efforts

Consumer-Centric Approach

Consumers' demand for a personalized experience will continue to intensify. When brokers and agents become partners in developing a consumer-centric approach to their business, consumers, agents, and brokers benefit. The following are a few statistics from a CustomerThink article by John Aves that are relevant to real estate.

• 71 percent of organizations cited customer experience as a competitive differentiator. (Dimension Data – 2017 Global Customer Experience (CX) Benchmark Report)
• 55 percent of consumers are willing to pay for consistently good service. (Thinkjar)
• 84 percent of organizations working to improve the consumer experience reported increased revenue. (Dimension Data)
• 75 percent of consumers expect a consistent experience whenever they engage in social media, websites, in-person or by phone. (SalesForce)

Trust Partnership

After 15 years of being in real estate, one challenge that circles back repeatedly is the lack of trust between brokers and agents. Organizations who can find trust partnerships in sharing of consumer data only strengthens the capability of delivering a personalized consumer experience and finding continued success well into the future. There are actions on both sides of the table to fortify the trust partnership.

Brokerages must create a culture of trust by enacting policy and practice on the usage, safety and security of an agent's customer database. They also need to ensure when delivering a customer experience to an agent's customer that the experience is co-branded with the agent and brokerage.

Agents must realize the future of building new and keeping existing customers needs complex systems with deep insights and delivery mechanisms to engage consumers to their services. These systems need first-party data from both parties to be effective and efficient in walking the consumer through an exceptional journey.

Centralizing the data

Defragmentation of consumer data allows brokerages and agents to have awareness of the data they own. There are systems available today which can ingest – in real-time – consumer personal information, behaviors, and interactions with the organization from many channels. These systems then create persistent profiles of consumers, group these profiles into different identities, and expose the results.

Centralized data enables these systems to supply 360-degree analytical view on how customers engage and allow complex delivery of marketing content. If a consumer interacts more on Facebook, responds by text message, and has been interested in a certain community, the system can deliver a marketing campaign aligned with this consumer's attributes.

Regulatory Compliance

Brokers and agents have loads of consumer personal information that has been found in a wide variety of different systems and tools. The General Data Protection Regulation has been in effect since May 25, 2018, and the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 states that consumers have a fundamental right to:

• Have transparency on the usage and protection of their personal information.
• Be forgotten and removed from any system.
• Have portability of the personal information to other systems and organizations.
• Immediate notification of any breach releasing their personal information

Broker-agent partnerships that share data ensure that everyone stays compliant with regulatory requirements and responds to consumer requests that enact their fundamental rights. Privacy laws like the one in California are already expanding to other states. Parts of the consumer's experience with an organization will be measured by how well it complies with such requests.

Summary

Real estate customers are demanding a consistent and quality consumer experience. The discord at this year's conferences are a testament on how widely the industry knows this is major. Therefore, brokers and agents are partners in conveying an exceptional customer experience in their marketing activities.

This means thinking about the customer first and foremost. Craft a culture of trust partnership to share and act on the consumer information available through systems to help the customer. Build a central repository of consumer information to obtain better insights and actions, and for regulatory compliance as part of the consumer experience.

The good news is that there are systems available to aid brokers and agents in managing the consumer experience. The WAV Group has been researching and testing these systems for usage in real estate. Contact Victor Lund, Marilyn Wilson, or David Gumpper to schedule time to discuss any interest in these systems. Firms may schedule a private WAV Group overview for their executive team or board by contacting Camilla Harvey at [email protected].

To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.