Good morning!
Here we are in the electronic age . . .
It’s easy to find ourselves feeling out of control as everything continues to swirl at a faster and faster pace.
Most Businesses seem to be having a tough time keeping up while at the same time serving their customers at a level that pleases them at a level that compels them to continue to be customers.
Everything is changing rapidly . . . and I believe the real challenge has to do with reliability and Simplicity. The business that can provide reliable, consistent service even as it continual adjusts and adapts to the ever-changing digital environment is the businesses that wins and retains more customers.
The enigma is that most businesses lose sight of the importance of simplicity. Developing new-fangled websites and automated billing processes back-fires when ease of use declines.
Don’t adopt a digital strategy for ANYTHING unless it makes it EASIER for the customer to transact business. It doesn’t matter how slick and powerful the new website is if it wastes the customer’s time.
The bummer is that because of the proliferation of the digital world, many businesses are forced into participation out sheer need for survival. This can distract them from their true purpose and reliability/integrity is at risk as they relegate a measure of “personal touch” to the Internet.
In my own business (Selling Houses), I see this play out frequently with respect to public digital platforms (internet sites) designed to give people access to information about houses for sale.
Much of the data out there is just plain WRONG . . . and there’s nothing the REALTOR can do about it because the information feeds from our Multiple Listing Service through IDX or Syndication technology in its original form and is distributed instantly to many thousands of websites.
On the surface, this is brilliant marketing . . . Just imagine that you list your house for sale and within a few hours of signing the listing agreement, millions of people can “see” it on-line . . . This is a level of marketing exposure that boggles the mind.
Here’s the rub . . . Inaccuracies show up . . . If you adjust the price, that price adjustment may or may not populate in all of those thousands of sites . . . if you sell the property, it may or may not indicate that “out there” . . . and many of the “aggregators or data” (Zillow) have developed algorithms to “zestimate values” that may vary widely from reality.
Reliability is out the window (as is consumer trust) . . . even our main source of property information http://realtracs.com (the horse’s mouth), is agonizingly fraught with misreporting the availability of “Active” listings. This market is moving quickly, and many of the properties that appear to be available are really under contract. This is extremely frustrating for Buyers who get excited about a property only to learn that it went under contract weeks prior.
There IS a reliable and simple solution:
Pick up the phone and give a REALTOR a call (or direct email).
There’s no amount of digital brilliance that will ever replace human reliability.
and
There’s no amount of technology necessary for the simplicity of human interaction.
Hmmmm . . . Just check out the Apple Store . . . or most of the new Banks . . . engineered to support customers with face-to-face interaction.
I look forward to serving my house Buying and Selling clients at the highest level possible and always find it easier the more direct human interaction we have . . . so call me 🙂
Just sayin’
Best,
b
PS – I just announced the Next Nashville Real Estate Consortium to be held November 1 . . . This is a full day community conference open to ANYONE as we bring local businesses together with local REALTORS to work on issues and opportunities we ALL face here in Middle TN . . . Contact me if you would like to participate and/or you know someone else who might.