The customer journey and how it evolves into a better business and pushes back on threats will amaze you

Topic – Improving the customer journey

Mentor – Alastair Lias

• Compete with cut price
• The recommendations will flow
• You will be surprised

Transcript:

Kevin:   All this week my guest has been Alastair Lias from speakconfidence.com.au. We have been discussing the customer journey, the importance of it.

Kevin:   Alastair, I thought it might be good today for us to deal with what happens when you get this culture and what happens when everyone is enrolled and understands this customer journey? What are some of the benefits that you see or you’ve seen with people who’ve done this?

Alastair:   No worries Kevin. It’s important I think. And as the industry evolves, and it is evolving extremely fast, and in my opinion the best way to adapt to the changing industry and actually combat the threats that are out there at the moment is by using that business empathy and using those touch points properly from the customer journey.

Alastair:   In this day and age we’ve got these agent comparison websites, we’ve got cut price agents, fixed fees, there’s more and more people now that are working from home. There’s a lot of things that don’t do the industry any favours, but I think one of the biggest problems is agents not combating those things themselves.

Alastair:   It’s very, very easy to have an issue with the changes in the industry and the threats that are out there and the people that want to take their fee for service off them and so forth, but in my opinion, unless you’re going to do something about it, you’ve got no right to complain.

Alastair:   I think in this industry we’ve been pretty bad at keeping the standards up together and making sure that we do the right thing by the industry and our clients by combating those threats. Now by actually using the customer journey, the client journey, we can have a huge impact on that. And a lot of that’s about what I will say, being in front of the right people at the right time. And that’s the very first start of the customer journey, or getting to one of those first start points is being in the right place at the right time with the right people.

Alastair:   Because if you’re not looking at that and if you’re not utilising that touch point or customer journey properly, you’re going to get your leads sold to you by a third party. Or it was very … back in the day, even a couple of years ago, you would listen to agents say, “Oh but that’s okay. They’re cut priced agents or whatever it might be. If I’m in a room I can actually always win that listing 100% of the time.”

Alastair:   So that’s great. But unfortunately what’s happening more and more is those are not getting called in. The marketing and the scare tactics that you see from a lot of these other businesses or disruptions or disruptors or whatever you like, they do your scare package and what it’s doing, it’s stopping the ability for agents to get bums on seat and actually speaking to people directly to be able to do that.

Alastair:   We need to combat that by understanding how do we get in those doors? What’s our company speak? And again, it does come back to the touch points and the customer journey to identify that, make those changes in our business and make sure that we’re getting in first to start to nurture people through the process and start to nurture people through that customer journey.

Alastair:   If we can do that from the very start to the very end, we’ve built ourself a client for life.

Kevin:   Yeah, well when you think about it the reason these third party sites have become so successful is because the service that’s offered by agents isn’t all that valued or not held in really high esteem. Give you an example: Would you go to a comparison site to get a surgeon or a doctor? You just wouldn’t do it.

Alastair:   Absolutely. And these other companies, they’ve obviously got some quite big backing. They’re not silly people. They’ve understood the customer journey. They know the touch point they need to make. They’ve made it very easy for themselves.

Alastair:   And we’ve probably made it very easy for them to succeed but an individual business can do this, they can do something about it.

Kevin:   What amazes me, Alistair, is that I’ve been doing this show for … I think we’re up to about week 500 now. It’s over a decade. And in that time, I’ve been approached by many agents about the possibility of selling my home.

Kevin:   I’ve also been approached by third party sites. I can tell you now that the only people who follow me up, give me any information or try to help me are the third party sites. I very rarely hear from other agents. You might hear from them for a couple of months then they drop off. It’s just not good enough.

Alastair:   No, 100%. And look, it really makes me angry, Kevin. I mean I’m very, very passionate about this industry and I love it and I hate to see those sort of threats get those inroads but it’s like everything, without that consistency … And again, not understanding the touch points and not being consistent with those, we’re going to continue to do it. But if we get the touch points down pat, we understand them, it does bring on that consistency. And it changes the way that the office actually does business.

Alastair:   And as you say, a lot of these other companies have worked that out. And we’re our own worst enemies and I think we can do something about that.

Kevin:   Well spoken. Been a great week, Alistair, thank you so much for your time. You can reach Alistair and his team at speakconfidence.com.au by going on any one of the links on our site.

Kevin:   Alistair, thanks for your time.

Alastair:   Thanks Kevin, much appreciated.