In September 2005, I eagerly traveled to San Diego to work my first trade show for HomeGain — the California Association of Realtors annual expo. The booth was set up to the tee with newly printed literature and various giveaways (pens, highlighters, notebooks, etc.) carefully spread across the table. “This is going to be a great show, I’m going to see a lot of sales today,” I thought as visitors began to approach the booth.
However, that wasn’t the case. Every time I told someone what HomeGain did (provide marketing services and leads) I was met with one of three responses:
- “ Oh, you’re one of THOSE companies? I’m not going to talk to you…”
- “Yeah? I was with XYZ company and they screwed me. Are you them?”
- (I can’t repeat the 3rd response here)
I knew then that we had some work to do……this Real Estate marketing industry for years has not treated its customers very well. Whether it’s false promises, underdelivery or an overall me first attitude; public opinion of real estate marketing companies has suffered.
That’s why almost four years and several hard fought battles later; nothing pleases me more to see the A+ rating HomeGain received from the BetterBusinessBureau. The service staff at HomeGain has worked deligently over this time to ensure that its customers are taken care of. This includes all customers we deal with; paying and free, happy and upset, everyone. We take the time to hear out every customer and offer every possible suggestion or solution we can.
In 2005, we received probably 10 complaint emails to every compliment. Today, those numbers have switched. We now hear almost daily from agents who are satisfied with the service in addition to the success they’ve had on product.
At the end of the day, it’s not just the customer facing people who have earned this grade; but the entire company who has adopted a customer first attitude.
Early last year, we created a HomeGain Customer Advocate of the Month award. The award was created to identify the one employee who made the greatest impact for our customers. Since January 2008, only 33% of the awards have gone to an individual in a customer facing role! Some examples of this include software engineers who stayed late to finish a new agent facing widget and business development reps who found a way to get less expensive, but higher quality traffic to our BuyerLink customers.
Examples like these highlight the contributions made by departments throughout the company toward the idea that HomeGain’s customers satisfaction comes first.
Check out HomeGain Reviews.
Read HomeGain product reviews: AgentView reviews, AgentEvaluator reviews and BuyerLink reviews.
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As a past user of HomeGain and satisfied client of a HomeGain agent, I too rate HomeGain an A+.
Congrats on the rating.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:03 am
You got me thinking about this…on three veins of thought. One, what are my brokerage’s ratings, what are all of the other real estate lead generators’ ratings and finally, what does it take for a real estate brokerage to provide that level of consistent customer service.
Congratulations on your acheivement.
Best
Eric
May 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Congratulations on your excellent rating!
As I read this I was wondering, what exactly does the BBB use for guidelines to produce these ratings? Is it just a shortage of complaints or do they actually experience the service? Inquiring minds would like to know.
I personally would give any company, even one whose services I don’t use, an A+ for recognizing that the customer does come first, that the customer expects service and is entitled to a product that produces what it claims to produce and acts upon it
May 16th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
The BBB takes into account a large number of factors in awarding a raing (I count 15 in the link below, including number of complaints)
http://www.bbb.org/business-reviews/ratings/overview.html
Laurie
Your words
“recognizing that the customer does come first, that the customer expects service and is entitled to a product that produces what it claims to produce and acts upon it”
are how we run our business.
We are not concerned with telling the world how many visitors we get or page views or how great our SEO rankings are, but rather on focusing on the success of our customers
May 16th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Louis,
“We are not concerned with telling the world how many visitors we get or page views or how great our SEO rankings are, but rather on focusing on the success of our customers”
As it should be Louis. Congratulations on your success!
May 16th, 2009 at 4:45 pm