High Tech Customer Service – Good? Bad? Ugly?

Working with customers 7 days a week, oftentimes more than 8 hours a day, I have to be really focused on delivering quality customer service.  Even though real estate has experienced a technology revolution like many other industries, technology alone can’t deliver the customer service necessary to a real estate transaction. 

So what is customer service today? I find that when I need help with some aspect of the technology I use – websites, software, cell phones and computers; I’m often directed to visit the Help Center on the website.  Here I can enter a search term that can bring up hundreds of results.  I scroll through page one of those results…then page two…then page three…and find nothing to help with my situation.  I then go to the “Contact Us” tab thinking I’m going to get a phone number or email and contact a real person.  No such luck because that page just refers me back to the Help Center.  In a few instances where I am given an email address for “customer support”, in sending the email I find I just get an automated email response that refers me back to the Help Center or a link doing the same.  I know what I’m getting and it’s a phrase you don’t hear much anymore: I’m getting the runaround.  Not ready to give up, I search every page of the website, every tab, multitudes of links, even the fine print at the bottom - looking for some way to get in contact with a real live person with no success.  By this time I’m thinking: “Is this their definition of customer service?” Is it yours because it sure isn’t mine! Have we allowed customer service to erode to this level in exchange for high tech? I’m afraid we have.

Customer service is having easy access to a live person! That person should have the ability to listen to you outline your problem and keep on listening while you describe the means you have already tried of resolving the problem.

Customer service is also a willingness to give the customer your full, undivided attention.  How many times have you started to explain a problem and been cut-off by a service representative who is anxious to pawn you off – to the Help Center?! Or to a solution you’ve already tried with no success?

Customer service is also providing a phone number to your customers – one displayed prominently on your website and your printed materials. I’d sure like to see the phone answered by a person on the first or second ring but it appears automated phone systems are here to stay. If I want to be a standout amongst the competition, I wouldn’t use them. To me, nothing says “we’d rather not deal with our customers” like getting an automated phone system.

No matter how high tech my career as a real estate sales executive in the Kansas City area becomes, I’m going to provide customer service according to my definition. Customer service that is personal, available, and built around the needs of my customers. My customers are far too essential to my livelihood for me to give them anything less.