Worth Clark Realty’s Core Values are:
- Deliver an exceptional customer experience
- Take ownership
- Advocate positivity
- Challenge the status quo
- Be fun to be around
Every one of those values are important to us, and we constantly strive to embody each of them.
But there is a reason customer experience is first on the list. Customer experience is #1 because we believe the success of any business begins and ends with the customer. Customers simply have too many choices to tolerate a bad experience. That’s a lesson other industries seem to have grasped a long time ago. An emphasis on customer experience is why an employee greets you the moment you walk into the Apple store. It’s why Zappos, the online shoe retailer, has such a customer-friendly return policy.
Frankly, we seem to be behind the customer experience curve in real estate.
Neglecting customer experience is a big reason why so many consumers have such a negative opinion of real estate agents. And while it’s true there are more shoe retailers to choose from than there are ways to purchase real estate, customers still have choices. Brokerages that neglect customer experience will lose buyers and sellers to firms that place customers at the center of their business model. That’s one reason why Worth Clark has grown so fast. It isn’t because we provide a product or service that’s substantially different from our competitors.
It’s because we have built our entire brokerage around delivering the best possible customer experience.
There is also a difference between customer service and customer experience. Of course, any brokerage (and every company) should aspire to deliver awesome customer service. However, the concept of customer service is a bit limiting.
What do we mean?
Customer service is often reactive: When something goes wrong, or a customer is unhappy, how can we fix it? On the other hand, thinking in terms of customer experience is a far more proactive approach. Customer experience is about designing, from the ground up, the way you engage with a customer. It’s one thing for Apple to respond well when a customer calls the company to complain about a product. It’s another thing for Apple to funnel customers to a clean, well-designed store staffed by employees who proactively engage customers before they purchase a product—and before they have a problem with that product.
Unfortunately, one brokerage—or even a whole bunch of brokerages—isn’t going to change the perception of our industry, no matter how well they design their customers’ experience. Collectively, our industry just has a reputation for poor customer service that is too entrenched.
But we are changing that.
Bryan Bowles, Worth Clark Realty’s founder and majority owner has quietly stepped away from the company to focus on a new venture. Bryan will still own Worth Clark Realty and serve on its board of advisors, but the vast majority of his time and energy will be spent on growing Transactly, a new digital platform that will bring increased transparency—and deliver a vastly improved customer experience—to real estate transactions.
While Bryan and the Transactly team focus on changing the industry, Worth Clark Realty will continue to deliver an unparalleled customer experience to buyers and sellers across a growing number of states.
We’re proud of our company, and we’re proud of our industry. We know the number of “good” Realtors® far exceeds the number of “bad” Realtors®. Making the public’s perception of our industry match the reality begins with shifting our focus from agents to customers by designing an experience that puts buyers and sellers where they belong:
At the center of the transaction, engaged in an experience that exceeds their expectations.
That’s the type of experience we deliver at Worth Clark Realty.
And that’s why customer experience is first on our list of values.
