14 Dec Solving customer pain points

Technology is helping us isolate, understand, and solve some customer pain points. What are they?

Topic – Top 5 Prop Tech developments of 2018

Mentor – Kylie Davis

• Inefficiencies with documentation
• Innovation with trust accounting
• End user customers and internal customers

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Transcript:

Kevin:   Kylie Davis is our guest all this week and this is the end of the week, so this is our last one, Kylie. But Kylie is from realcontent.guru and she’s been looking all this week at the top five prop tech developments of 2018. Kylie, of course, one of our very special guests and will be one of our hosts at the Inman Conference in New York at the end of January.

Kevin:   Gee, that’s only a few weeks away now and you can come with us as well. Just use the button on the homepage at RE Uncut. Go and have a look at that and that’ll take you through to the brochure. It’ll tell you how you can fly there with Qantas. How you can spend seven nights at the Paramount Hotel. We’ll get you into Inman. You can join us at the APAC drinks and that’s where we host drinks for all the Aussies and you’ll meet some very important people.

Kevin:   Like this person I’m talking to right now, Kylie Davis. Kylie, let’s round this series out by talking about how technology is helping us isolate, understand, and solve some customer pain points. What are they?

Kylie:   Well, I think it depends whether you’re a buyer or a seller or a renter or an investor or a property owner what those pain points are. But I think really generally, they are that buying and selling property is a really, well, it’s really slow and it’s really stressful. And it involves handing information over from filling in lots of forms and handing information over from one person to the next person so that they can make mistakes filling in those forms and then give them back to you and after many days delay.

Kylie:   So there’s lots of inefficiency in that process once you’ve decided to buy and sell and there’s also a lot of inefficiency in finding properties that are suitable and matching people that are suitable to properties and then even financing those decisions whether that’s renting or buying.

Kevin:   Yeah. So Kylie, can you give me some examples of what we’re doing in this area to solve some of these problems?

Kylie:   Well, I think look the one that’s been around for a while but is only just starting to get adopted really a lot is DocuSign. So being able to sign a document from anywhere in the world, and have as many people sign or witness it, makes life a lot easier without you having to print it out, scan it, have it witnessed. You can do it simultaneously, which is really powerful. And in New South Wales even the Government’s finally changed the Rental Tenancies Act to allow that to be a way of signing a tenancy agreement. So that’s improved it a lot.

Kylie:   We’re seeing a lot of innovation happening around trust accounting. So, how do you account for funds in real time, make sure that they’re always available without having to do the old fashioned quite laborious accounting methods for that and having money sitting in separate accounts. How do you just sort of know where the money is at any particular time and have it allocated.

Kylie:   We’re also seeing some really innovative thinking around changes in the bond market. So as a tenant you need to put a bond down. If you then decide to move properties, you have to put another bond down and that’s likely to be required before you get your old bond back. So that’s a lot of money to have out, especially for a lot of tenants who might not be in the best financial circumstances. And so we’re seeing really innovative thinking happening around there to work on how to change that process and have it as an insurance policy, rather than having to put money in with the Government.

Kevin:   Yeah. Some of these efficiencies that are coming in, or these innovations are really solving problems aren’t they, with like we identify a problem, you’ve given us some, identified a few there for us. And then the technology comes in to create the solution for that problem, Kylie.

Kylie:   Yeah, and I think, look, there’s lots of different kinds of customers in this space as well. So we’ve got our end user customers, so buyers, sellers, renters and landlords. And then we’ve also got our internal customers. So our employees and what is the experience that they’re having on a day to day basis in the work that they’re doing and how can we make, how can we solve some of the pain points that they’re experiencing?

Kylie:   Rockend have done some great research recently into the property management sector, and we can see from that research that most property management businesses are small little agencies, with probably less than three property managers. They’re dealing with about 150 properties and they are busy. And they’re busy doing really quite dreary work of making sure maintenance and all of, maintenance is done, inspections are done. And it’s lots of ticking and flicking and admin sort of stuff that are pain points when they just come in that kind of volume.

Kylie:   So we’re seeing solutions on how you kind of batch them, manage them more efficiently, get them done to a much higher standard. Turn it around more quickly so that you’ve got happier tenants and happier landlords, so that you’re not dealing then constantly with complaints from them. And sort of recording and registering all of that so that you’re building up sort of information on when things will need to be replaced. Getting an understanding of when things can be replaced or serviced so that you then don’t have to deal with something broken down the track.

Kevin:   Gee, it’s been fantastic talking to you this week, Kylie. Kylie Davis from realcontent.guru. Make sure you use the link and talk to Kylie and her team. We’ve covered a lot of territory this week as Kylie’s given us her top five prop tech developments of 2018. It’s been a delight working with you during the year as well, Kylie. I’m so looking forward to having you with us in New York at Inman at the end of January, and also helping us stream some great content out of New York back to our audience and helping us launch Property TV and our association with Coicio.

Kevin:   So thank you very much for all your help and support, Kylie, and look forward to working with you at Inman and also all next year.

Kylie:   It’s been my absolute pleasure. Kevin, thank you so much. I’m looking forward to having a cosmo with you in New York.

Kevin:   Sounds good to me.

Kylie:   See you soon.