I was recently having a conversation with a friend about how bad customer service has gotten these days. I told him, “Service is so awful customers expect to be abused. Cold food in restaurants, dirty public washrooms, late deliveries, rejected parts, lost orders, lazy staff – it’s all normal now. Give them bad service and they’re not surprised. Prior to Covid, it was already getting bad, but now it’s running rampant.”
I brought this up to my entire real estate team last year and our solution was to offer what we call, “The Promise.” The Promise is our promise to give you a 5-star experience during your home sale. We’re serious about this and if we are not giving you 5-star service, we want you to tell us. In return for giving you a 5-star experience, we only ask two things of you. 1) We ask that share with us the name of a friend, family member, or co-worker who needs help with real estate. 2) We ask that you give us a 5 star review online.
The beautiful thing about The Promise is that everyone gets what they want. The clients get 5-star service from our real estate team and we get a happy client that wants to refer us to everyone they know.
Now, just saying you want to give 5-star service won’t fix the problem if your business doesn’t have proper systems in place. You need to have good people that are trained properly and have a great attitude about helping the clients. You also need to have tight controls in place to make sure you head off any potential problems. These two things may seem easy, but trust me when I say these are two of the hardest pieces to the customer service model.
Because I’m a long time Dave Ramsey ELP (endorsed local provider) I have access to their Entreleadership Program. This program gives me access to network with many other successful business leaders, not only here in Kansas City, but all over the United States. There are many things these business owners discuss on the private Entreleadership platform, but many of the most intense discussions are around giving great customer service and hiring the right people. It really doesn’t matter what your business is. If you can nail these two things, people will tell their friends about you.
The other day I was talking to a potential client on the phone. He confessed their previous experience with buying a home was horrible. He shared some stories with me of that process and clearly did not want to go through that again. I assured him that would not happen with my real estate team and then told him about The Promise. I asked him, “I can’t imagine what you would be upset about while working with our team, but if for any reason whatsoever you feel we are not giving you 5-star service, I want you to call me personally so I can take care of it.” I told him I am serious about that and asked if he would be willing to do that. He assured me he would and then said, “You know, I love that! No one cares like that anymore!”