Homemovers have high expectations of you!

We asked homemovers if they had contacted multiple agents what would make one stand out above others. They told us that the quality of response and the proactiveness of the agent would be stand out influences. This echoed landlords preferences, who also said a quality response was considered good service.

Here are five top tips of how you can meet these expectations:

1. Strive to constantly meet expectations rather than exceed for a few

You can spend a lot of time and effort to ‘go the extra mile’ for a couple of customers however it may not reap you any long term rewards.  Research from ‘The Effortless Experience’ which surveyed over 75,000 customers, showed that loyalty breeds when customers know they can consistently rely on you and your company.  A number of lessons can be taken from this research – strive to provide a consistently good, reliable service all of the time, with competent and professional service from staff. If problems arise, find simple and quick solutions. Aim to make the interactions between your company and your customers as effortless as possible.

2. Think mobile

Reading emails are now the most popular thing to do on a smartphone. So think about how your emails will look on a small mobile screen when they are being read. Use a minimum of size 14 font and make sure all links work and go to a mobile ready place. Avoid words in the subject line that will trigger the spam filter such as ‘free’, ‘investment’, or the £ sign. If you want to include the price of the property put this in the body of the text. Cover off key information in the first 40 characters to ensure you capture attention. For more information on how to create effective email and newsletter campaigns sign up for one of our free webinars on email marketing.

3. Reply by phone and email

Try to phone AND email homemovers back. People may not be able to speak on the phone all of the time, so by doing both you will increase your chances of getting through. Ultimately this also makes you look proactive (a characteristic homemovers expect and want). This is especially true for lettings – our research shows that over half of landlords expect a phone and email response.

4. Read the comments

More people are using the comments field within Rightmove leads to tell you about their situation or ask key questions about the property. Remember homemovers are easily turned off so don’t let this simple thing make you miss out on an opportunity.

5. Notice appraisal and instruction opportunities

When a person sends a lead on Rightmove they have the option to indicate whether they have a property to sell or let. We saw during the mystery shop at the seminar that many agents did not identify these golden instruction opportunities. We know up to 70% of buyer leads on Rightmove also have a property to sell so have a closer look at the leads you are receiving.

Next time…

We will look at which top three factors influence a homemovers decision to instruct you over the competition.