Training the team on the importance of understanding the journey and the impact it can have is critical

Topic – Improving the customer journey

Mentor – Alastair Lias

• How do you do it?
• Have open discussions
• Look for improvement

Property Management Matters with Tara Bradbury – Think about your community involvement as a team

Transcript:

Kevin:   Our guest this week is Alastair Lias, who is the business owner for speakconfidence.com.au. We’re having a look at tracing the customer journey. Interesting chat yesterday, Alistair thank you very much. And that was explaining what that customer journey is. The understanding of it. It’s probably the best definition I’ve had cause we’ve spoken for quite some time about the difference between being transactional and being relationship and this is really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Alastair:   Yeah, absolutely Kevin. I think that’s been forced upon us due to current market conditions and what we’ll call the disruptors coming into the industry. And it’s something that it needs to be identified and mapped out.

Kevin:   Yep. Okay, let me then deal today with how do we sell this to the team? How does a leader enrol everyone in it? And does it has to come from the office or the individual?

Alastair:   Definitely the office. And we talk a lot about office culture and office values, and those sorts of things. Now understanding and actually living the customer journey is an office thing, and it obviously it starts at the top. That starts with the office owner, principal sales manager. Whether it be that individual or a team depending on the office structure. But it’s first and foremost the principal of the business understanding not just the customer journey but the importance of what sort of a difference it’s gonna make in his or her business.

Kevin:   What have you seen some of the clever operators do in terms of training their team to understand and embrace this? What have they done?

Alastair:   Yeah. Again, it comes down to that understanding piece and it’s not just a one off thing. A lot of it’s about actually having it very visual, making sure people understand the customer journey there. It’s something that I believe, it has to be ongoing. It’s something that should happen in every team meeting, every sales meeting regardless of what part of the business it is.

Alastair:   And it should have the full understanding. So a lot of it’s about that consistency of just always looking at it. Because as it evolves and the customer journey isn’t just mapping it out, putting it out there and saying well that’s it. It’s something that it has to change with the industry. Because as you know, Kevin, businesses that don’t change just aren’t going to survive by continuing to be looking at it. They’re going to be looking at different touch points and those sorts of things along the way.

Alastair:   And we will talk about that mapping the customer journey out a little bit later. But it’s about just always sitting down with the team, looking at it constantly and coming up with new ideas. How can we do things better? And obviously it’s a resource thing as well, and that’s where they discuss, well, what sort of resources can we put into this and what changes are we able to make based on the size of our business?

Kevin:   Would it be a good idea each time the team gets together, whether that’s weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, it doesn’t really matter. That they actually focus on this as a part of an agenda item. In other words, what have we done right? What have we done wrong? How can we improve what we’re doing? How can we be looking at this customer journey? Alastair.

Alastair:   Yeah, absolutely Kevin. And again, if you look at the typical team meetings, a lot of it’s perusing properties, going through the current listing. It’s very transactional. Again, and as you said before, we look at the difference between transactional and relationship based. And this is where the relationship based side of things really does open that broader question and the broader picture as far as that goes.

Alastair:   So a lot of it is continuing looking at it as an agenda item, looking at the customer journey, giving examples. Things might have happened during the week or the fortnight or whatever it might be, where somebody says, “Well, here’s something that’s cropped up along the way” And that’s something that they say, well there’s another touch point, whatever it might be. So engaging with the entire team, getting that sort of feedback because the principal in their position in a way they’re overarching part of the business.

Alastair:   Everyone in that business is going to have different touch points along the way. They’re going to have different ideas. They’re going to have different transactions or interactions with people along the way. So involving the team that way is the best way to do it. But again, it has to come from that leadership of the principal to make sure that’s happening.

Kevin:   Tomorrow we’re going to talk about creating the timelines and those touch points. Before we move into that can I just ask you what are some of the typical touch points that you look for or that you might create?

Alastair:   I think when they do start the customer journey and it’s going to expand cause I mean they’re literally can be hundreds and it’s how do we actually put that into a timeline that is understandable and that people can actually associate with as far as that goes.

Alastair:   I mean, touch points from the very start can be your marketing. It could be your shopfront. What is your shopfront look like? What is your websites? If you’ve got a really bad shopfront, then that speaks contempt. People will look at your Business and they will see you’ve got contempt for your clients. So there’s all those sorts of touchpoints from there. Then it’s the communication process during the selling stage and one of the most important places where people do actually have the fall down is after the sale.

Alastair:   I’ve spoken and I’ve done interviews with a lot of people after the sale and sort of spoke to them about their experience with their agent. And a lot of the time they feel they’ve had this interaction with the agent. They’ve almost become part of their family, they’re speaking to them hopefully on a daily basis or whatever it might be. And then the sale happened and they feel cut off, and they feel like they’ve been left out in the dark. So those are a few examples of some of the touch points that they can be easily identified and that changes can be made from a team perspective.

Kevin:   Makes a lot of sense. Tomorrow with Alastair we’re gonna have a look at a building that journey, creating those timelines around the touch points. Alistair, we’ll talk again tomorrow morning. Thanks for your time.

Alastair:   Thanks, Kevin. Cheers