Why We Have to Be Faster and Better

Good customer service used to be pretty clear-cut. Do everything you say you will do and the customer was happy. It’s not so easy in today’s world. Social media, online competition, and real-time customer feedback on a global scale can make it hard to head off any situation that might make a customer stray. There are many outside factions that contribute to the challenges to meet the demands of the today’s discerning customer.

The good old days

In the not so long ago past, as a real estate company, brokers were assigned transferees by a corporation or relocation management company and for the most part, they loyally worked with the brokerage and the assigned agent on their move. But today, the transferees have almost always gone onto the internet no longer than two minutes after they have learned of their assignment. They are looking at houses, they are clicking on neighborhood information, and they start talking to agents, they are getting prequalified, typically all with non-approved and sometimes questionable providers. The challenge is the corporation and the relocation company are depending on the large referral fee from the assigned broker and other affiliated partnerships to offset some of the cost of the relocation.

With that magical tool of a smartphone available to all of us, I can understand how the temptation to begin their own research is hard to resist. Surely, some rando @joeschmoe on Twitter knows the best real estate agents instead of your own employer or their partners who have relocated thousands of families to that market. Crowdsourcing can be a very powerful competitor since there always seems to be a slight suspicion by the transferee of their employer who wants them to follow certain protocol, versus @joeschmoe who has no skin in the game.

The deadly dual referral fees

But somehow the urgency felt by a prospective transferee is not felt by their employer or service provider. It can take weeks or sometimes even months for a referral to come to a broker after the transferee gets wind of their possible relocation. I’m not sure how to adequately convey the giant problem that can cause for a real estate company. But when a transferee has found their way to an online portal or an affinity program that charges referral fees and then the same referral comes through to the same company via the Relocation Department, now we have a dual referral fee situation. It often doesn’t matter who the agent is, because it is the company that has accepted the referral.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard brokers say they have had to pay two referral fees on one transaction just to appease their sources of the business. It happens because online portals go direct to agents or branches and relocation companies go to centralized account management operation like a relocation department. It doesn’t just mean no profit for the broker, it often means coming out of pocket to make everyone happy at a loss.

Is there a solution?

There is really no way around this. Well, actually there is. If agents and branch managers weren’t allowed to sign referral agreements or blanket agreements and everything ran through centralized account management, then it could be avoided by cross-checking each name in a the referral tracking database for duplicates. But I think that ship has sailed. Unless the company is very small, it is like herding cats to control what happens in the field. Particularly if agents are paying hefty sums to online portals who generate those leads directly to them.

The more plausible solution is for recruiters, corporations and relocation companies to do a better job of explaining the value of the established process and the chosen providers and take a cue from the online world and do everything much faster and earlier in the process. The minute the word ‘relocation’ is breathed in the presence of the transferee, they need to get the prospective destination broker and listing broker on the line and do a warm handoff. The reason the relocation companies and corporations don’t do that is because have no motivation to do so because the dual referral fee isn’t their problem. The broker has to figure it out. The broker is going to do everything in their power not to upset their sources of business, even if it means going in the hole on a transaction and paying two referral fees.

Who’s brave enough to do it?

If this were a true partnership, the sources of these referrals would do everything in their power to ensure their transferee ends up with their preferred partner who is a market expert before they go out and start doing their own research. There is a reason why lump sum employees deliver low service scores about their move. They do everything on their own with no expert guidance, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Online lead gen sources have mastered the warm handoff and quick assignment. It establishes the relationships very early in the process setting everyone up for success. And I’m not talking about routing a lead through an online portal. I am talking about an actual warm handoff via a three-way call by telephone. It would take some orchestrating on both sides to make it happen, but I think every relocation director and broker would appreciate the opportunity to connect with the transferee from the very beginning. So instead of a transferee jumping on the internet and wildly heading into the great unknown, with a warm handoff from their relocation provider they will be introduced to their local experts who will guide them through the entire process. I wonder if any relocation company is brave enough to try this? Consumers want information and resources fast. We need to give that to them.

“The speed of the leader determines the pace of the pack.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet