With access to tenant feedback from in excess of 100,000 tenants, Vaboo have identified 5 significant focus areas that unite these agents, and have shaped the success that they have seen.
Smart agents need to be striving to incorporate these areas for growth against an unpredictable backdrop of 2021. However, they are also vital for emerging Proptech to consider in their innovation in order to create a vastly improved tenant experience
So what have successful agents been doing that will drive Proptech innovation in 2021?
It all begins with a focus on creating a connection with their community. Transforming their business from a focus purely on sales, to understanding and engaging with their customers in a way that resonates with them the most. There has been a shift in this generation of renters to one that wants to help, to feel connected, and to be social in a mobile and efficient way. To succeed this has to be facilitated.
Their second focus area is delivering relevant, meaningful content, and services that go beyond monetary value - they make sure to remind each customer that they are, in their way, changing their world for the better.
Thirdly they want to establish customers for life by making sure they diversified their product line, put this clearly in their customers’ line of sight, as well as offering exemplary customer service.
The fourth area is to establish their philanthropic commitments to reflect the changing social priorities of what had become the “new normal”. This compassionate approach to lettings has allowed them to continue the conversation with their customers through new incentives, more personalized interactions, supporting other local businesses and creating support networks within their community.
Finally, all of these solidified their fifth focus area, which was to create a culture of innovation and to become leaders in their space. A space where they fully understand their customers and use that information to inspire every decision they make.
Inspired innovation
The culture of innovation is simply no longer a nice to have, agencies need to use Proptech solutions to show leadership and to serve their customer’s needs. They need to create strong connections and build a brand that goes beyond their products and services.
By strategically partnering with Proptech designed with the needs of tenants in mind, agents can provide the necessary agile and flexible tools to make tenants and their employees feel comfortable in their homes, provide seamless user experience, encourage valuable and consistent communication and support their lifestyle aspirations.
This is especially important to delivering a competitive edge in a quickly evolving market, where enhanced connections with your customers will generate immediate and future value for business.
With financial and health and social issues at the forefront of tenant concerns, agents need to prioritize and understand their customers more than ever before. To collect necessary insights on tenants and to better understand how they are actually using their homes, allows agents to differentiate their offering in a way that is meaningful to the end-user. To do this successfully will require access to regular data and feedback.
Real-time feedback can ensure the longevity of tenancies as well as the opportunity for establishing other service needs. This is indisputably what gives market-leaders the informed, competitive edge they need. In simpler terms: investing in tenant experience is more than just investing in technology, it’s the adoption of a data-driven approach.
Adapting your engagement strategy to this data is the key to building both short and long-term success, and creating a digital tenant experience has become more important than ever before.
The more you learn about your tenants’ needs through data-driven decision-making, the more successful you will be as you continue to adapt and transform to accommodate the new needs of customers in 2021.
Jonathan Stein, Founder at Customer rewards and engagement platform Vaboo, commented: “With huge evolution and opportunity in the agency space, those that can prove why they are different will stand out and thrive. Competition has increased tremendously over the past decade, and now is the time for agents to put the tenant customer at the centre of the transaction”.
