Bernice Ross
I believe our industry’s current focus on technology and being agent-centric is misguided, especially when it fails to make the customer experience paramount.
At Inman Connect 2018 in San Francisco, Gary Keller laid out the dichotomy that the industry faces in terms of technology – will we have tech-enabled agents or agent-enabled tech? Keller is betting on tech-enabled agents, especially with his most recent announcement as he takes the reins of the Keller Williams as CEO.
Many other companies seem to be going a different route, as Real Trends’ Steve Murray noted in a recent podcast.
“There is a strong belief that to compete in future, real estate brokers at the local, regional, and national level are going to have to have comprehensive, integrated, big data, artificial intelligence driven technology platforms to equip their agents to compete for the customer of tomorrow,” he said.
The question is, will data and knowledge about consumer habits trump the power that agents and their relationships hold with their customers?
The 2018 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers reports similar findings to the Harris Insight Study. Sixty-three percent of sellers and 53 percent of buyers found their agents through a referral from a friend, neighbor or relative or used an agent they had worked with before, according to the study. Furthermore, 75 percent of the sellers and 68 percent of buyers interviewed only one agent that they hired.
Technology may help an agent or company to identify who is going to transact now or make it easier to convert a lead into a client. Nevertheless, it’s the agent who gets that first face-to-face interview who normally gets the deal.
Tech Lacks Finesse at Key Points
Dan Duffy, the CEO of United Real Estate Group, the parent company of United Real Estate and United Country Real Estate, said he doesn’t see technology as the only solution real estate companies should be looking at.
“I’m not certain that these companies understand what is required to truly become a technology company. Without the legacy tech DNA in all levels of the organization, it presents an incredible change management challenge. Senior leadership can try to change this, but the culture, mid-level management, and staff remain entrenched in how real estate tenured professionals think and work, not how technology tenured professionals think and work,” he said. “Instead, technology is one of a number of enabling tools that when properly designed and deployed makes the fundamental task easier or more automated.”
Prior to entering the real estate industry 12 years ago, Duffy was president and CEO of the world’s largest Microsoft Business Solutions partner with 26 offices spanning three continents which served over 12,000 clients operating in 48 countries.
“Advances in artificial intelligence only amplify the degree of difficulty in execution and the reward for getting it right,” he said. “You may have the perfect algorithm that alerts you that a person will transact in 43 days. The AI may also recommend certain words such as ‘security,’ ‘trust’ or ‘preservation of wealth’ that may make the person more likely to transact. Even with these capabilities, AI falls woefully short in its ability to handle the deep emotional challenges required to close a real estate transaction.”
Where technology companies fall short is failing to recognize that to be a complete solution, they must solve what Duffy calls the “real estate problem.”
“This means having a dependable source of highly competent and process-disciplined agents who have high standards for quality assurance and who deliver a consistently outstanding consumer experience,” he said. “In other words, it must be both agent and consumer-centric. This function cannot be outsourced. No tech company can solve for it without partnering or acquiring it. Ironically, this has the same impact on the tech company’s margins and long-term prospects.”
A key takeaway from the 50 women I interviewed as part of the California Association of Realtors WomanUP! Initiative was that those companies who have made the customer experience their prime focus are the ones who have gone the distance for decades, regardless of tech changes or market shifts. I don’t believe that situation is going to change any time soon.
Bernice Ross is a nationally syndicated columnist, author, trainer and speaker on real estate topics. She can be reached at Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com.
