Page 26 - Sonoma County Gazatte May 2017

MARKETING 101 Making the Customer the #1 Priority
I talk to people all the time who are waiting for one thing or another. This makes perfect sense for many things like I am waiting until I graduate from medical school before I start work as a surgeon. I am waiting until I get the job offer before I move across the country...
By Elizabeth Slater
Over the past couple of months we have been seeing some shocking
I spoke with a guy last week who wanted to get pre-approved for a home loan but wanted me to let him know when the rates went back under 4% to actually buy a house. This is crazy for a couple of reasons. Number one we have no idea if or when rates will drop below 4% for a 30 year fixed and next is that 4% is amazing and final bonus point is what if your dream home comes up for sale while you are waiting and rates are 4.1%? The answer is to buy a house when you want or need to buy a house. If rates go down you can refinance and if rates go up then you won.
examples of horrible customer service by large companies.
Naturally the one that comes to mind most readily is the egregious United
Airlines debacle last month, when the airline used force to drag a paying customer o a plane so they could give someone else his seat. Unfortunately, this is not a one-time scenario for United Airlines, on another ight, the company ejected a frequent yer passenger from his seat in rst class to give the seat to someone that the airline deemed more important. The passenger was told that if he didn’t give up his seat, he would be put in handcu s.
It is kind of similar when thinking of selling your home. Sell when you need or want to sell. I have had clients tell me that they are waiting for the ideal time to sell their home. Of course there are a lot of factors but most people want the most out of the home they are selling and then they want an excellent deal on the next house. If you are buying and selling in the same market then your home went up in value but so did the house you are buying so no net gain and if you are moving up from say a $500,000 house to a $600,000 house and you wait until the market goes up 10% then you got an extra $50,000 on the sale but it cost you an extra $60,000 when buying.
What amazed me when I saw the video of the removal of the man by airline security people was not only the force used to remove the passenger but the fact that none of these airline employees or the security detail dragging the man down the aisle gave any thought to the fact that cell phones (which are ubiquitous these days) have cameras. Surely someone should have realized that the whole incident was being lmed.
The upheaval and worldwide press coverage was followed up by a less than stellar “apology” from the CEO of United Airlines. All in all, this was an extremely bad day for United Airlines; the employees involved and its share prices.
We have a basic inventory issue right now. We have more buyers than we have inventory and so the market needs to get homes on the market for sale right now. The good news is that as a seller you are currently more in the driver’s seat than buyers. You can sell your home contingent upon you finding a replacement home which means that if you don’t find your replacement home, you do not need to finish the transaction. The bottom line is that sellers have the advantage and there is a backlog of people waiting for the right time to sell. If you wait too long then you will be one of the many people jumping in and you will lose your advantage. This can be the market as a whole or just your neighborhood. If a bunch of your neighbors get off the fence before you do, you may lose an edge.
I believe that most of us have, at one time or another, been on the receiving end of some bad or at least indi erent customer service, but things just seem to be getting worse. United Airlines employees obviously thought they had
a perfect right to eject a paying passenger from a plane without negative consequences
Conversely there are de nitely times when customers’ expectations are out of the realm of possibility or they are in a bad mood or just plain frustrated and take it out on a company employee. In these cases something has to be done to ease the situation. Though getting into a shouting match or dragging them out of your place of business should not be at the top of the list.
Of course, once you sell your home then you are a buyer in this market and that is another reason that you want to sell now. You want to use your leverage as a seller to help you with your next purchase. There are many creative ways to make this work for you and I can refer you to some great Real Estate Agents to help make that happen.
1: Don’t think of these customers as ‘dif cult’. That puts the onus of their behavior squarely on them. It may be they are frustrated with how they something that happened prior to them getting to you. So, at least to start with, give them the bene t of the doubt.
2: Don’t take it personally – usually when visitors complain or are frustrated they may well be unhappy with company policies or procedures – not you.
3: Don’t match the customer’s anger, stay calm and remember that they are not usually angry with you.
4: It is usually not a good idea to tell an irate customer to calm down. It tends to just make them angrier.
5: Even if you can solve their problem in the rst two minutes,
don’t. Give the customer time to tell you why they are upset. Once they have had time to complain, then solver their problem. Sometimes they just want someone to listen.
Talk to your real estate professional about selling your house to help your family and help this market so you can get into the next house and watch your equity and interest rates rise with a smile as you sit in your new home with a historically low fixed rate.
6: If you can’t solve their problem right away, take notes of what they say. Even if you don’t need them and are not going to use them, taking
Even if the manager has taken over handling the problem, you need to make sure that a solution was found, whether you are the one calling the back or not. It doesn’t hurt for you to send a handwritten note to the customer once the problem has been solved.
notes makes the customer feel as if they are being taken seriously.
7: Once it is your turn to talk, start with an agreement, “Yes, I can see why that would be frustrating.” Or an apology
8: If it seems appropriate (and sometimes even when it doesn’t), start with an apology, “I am sorry you had this experience, let me see what I can do to x this.”
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11: Learn some stress management techniques so that you can stay calm when facing frustrated or irate customers.
Need to know more? Please send me your real estate and mortgage related questions. I am happy to answer you and it may become the topic of a future article.
9: If you have to refer the situation to a manager and a manager is not available take the customers contact information and assure them that you or someone else will get back to them with a solution.
10: Follow through with whatever you promise the customer.
Research has shown that customers who have had a problem with a business and that problem has been successfully resolved are more loyal to that business than those customers who have never had a problem.
If that’s not enough, remind yourself, when you have an urge to tell someone o that somewhere, someone may be videoing you with their cell phone.
Elizabeth Slater: In Short Direct Marketing E@inshortmarketing.com 707.953.1289 Facebook: facebook.com/inshortdirectmarketing/
Blog: inshortdirectmarketing.wordpress.com/.