Customer Relation & Real estate

If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the business at all…Leo Burnett

Unfortunately when it comes to real estate with all due respect it seems that some where till recent past we have forgotten such quotes or the zest behind the same! Because the fact remains that this is one industry where the customer relation has taken a back seat or at least apparently that’s the scenario. Many a wont agree with my opinion & with pages of every news paper are filled with the advertising & numerous hoarding displaying various projects & prodigy of the developers, it’s hard to believe. Yet the truth remains that when ever a customer approaches to a developer the confidence level about the product getting delivered is pretty low. This can be judged from the questions a customer asks for e.g. is the rate the developer telling correct? , Can he assure the possession date? Are the amenities given going to be there in reality? What about the specification? Is the rate going to be same till end? Are all legal documents clear? And so many! Have you ever seen somebody asking such questions in a car show room or white goods shop?

Nothing wrong, the home isn’t like a daily buy type commodity as for most of the customers its one time buy in life! And the fact with real estate is it has failed to generate the confidence in the minds of customers about their product or the way deals are done. That’s why the customer is fussy & not sure about the developer’s commitments.

Now when we call customer, who exactly is in our mind? Many a will think this as an absurd question! Because even a kid can tell, the one who comes to you to buy your product is your customer! Well that’s what you expect a kid to answer but ask any MNC’s (multi national co) marketing head & he will say Customer is the one who by any way is in contact with the company! He may be your supplier, contractor, employee or even a courier guy coming at your office to deliver any package & off course the person who wants to buy your product too! Now that’s the way how you look at your customer as unless you identify him how you are going to make him confide in you? You can’t generate confidence in any customer by just advertising or spending budgets on PRO, but you make others confide in you by number of small acts for a longer period consistently! That’s the way people start trusting you, for e.g. take name of Tata, Wipro, Kirloskars, Toyota or any such name. They haven’t got the trust of their customers in one single night! It’s the years of service & following commitments have made them reach at the stage where they are right now! There are two categories which we can divide customers in: a. direct customer i.e. who is buying or have bought your product & b. All those agencies who are part of that product means right from your employees too suppliers. This is what real estate industry needs to pick up.

First we will consider direct customer & the grievances by them in real estate. For e.g. se the information brochure of few developers (which any way any customer is bound to do while on home hunt) & see the way area table is written! Most of the time it just mention one figure & then some shows chargeable area some didn’t & no ratios of what rate per sft is being offered or what’s the exact package is being offered? And he is just unable to compare the price range vs. product offered (which is area here) & then how he will trust us? Why we can have a single linear system like automobiles have on specification form to offer the customer? Same, hardly any brochure consists possession date as that’s another question followed after the money matters are taken care.

This is about the customer who is enquiring, once the flat is booked how many times the principal developer or his senior staff remains in touch with the customer? Gone are the days when means of communication were limited, today we can be accessible in any part of the world by means of cell phone, net etc. Being accessible is most important part in generating trust as many a time main complaint about the real estate is, once booking done the builder is not just available for any quarry! Here many of my collogues wont agree but that’s what market speaks & it's not my personal view! One need not have to be personally available, it’s just somebody should be available who can take care of the quarry of the customer is the zest behind it! And this leads to another important aspect of real estate & that is Employees. Maximum job changing happens in real estate, though exact figures aren’t there as this isn’t an organized segment but continuous staff shuffling does hamper communication with your actual direct customer. For e.g. some arrangement has been agreed between the flat holder & your sales man about payment terms & the sales person lefts the job & the next person again starts from ground zero saying he don’t know what has been agreed earlier!

These types of scenes are common amongst customer at marketing staff, site staff, and legal staff as well accounts staff. And these small things though may get resolved yet it annoys the customer & shatters the trust on us. Here what we can do is to take more efforts on assuring our employees to be with us for longer period at least project to project & try to formulate proper systems to document such communications instead keeping oral between personal levels. It will help in reducing conflicts with customers. And another common complaint heard is the customer has to follow the matter number of times with the developer what ever it may be! Here too we can make an arrangement of noting down ever communication as well giving some number to the same so we can give that number to him & he will be assured about getting proper attention. Also we should train our all staff about our responsibility towards our commitments. Never the customer has required following us instead we should be prompt on giving him feed back about his demands.

Here I remember sharing of experience by a senior officer in MSEB. He said in remote village when the light goes off because of any line fault & if the line man there is sleeping or is been drunk & unable to repair the fault, the public says “ MSEB is useless!”. But if the same guy attends the fault & restarts the electric supply then the public says “MSEB is real good & improved!” This shows the importance of behavior of your employees in trust building process of the customers towards your product as well company.

At my previous work place I have started taking get together of the flat holders on ongoing site at different stages of works along with site staff, marketing staff, contractors, and a practice which I am still following. This makes them possible to interact with all those who are associated with the project & understand the efforts we are taking for them in better way. Similar exercise we are doing for completed projects & there residents too. Many developers are afraid of such practices saying what’s need of educating the customer unnecessarily? As there are some bad experiences from the customers too, taking undue advantage of the developers friendliness! But then such things do happens in every industry!

Ultimately we have to decide for whom we are working & that only decides what we are going to get!

--
Sanjay Deshpande
Sanjeevani Dev
Envo_power Committee,Credi,Pune

Please do visit my blog to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani !

http://visonoflife.blogspot.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16939159@N05/sets/72157624239269202/

www.sanjeevanideve.com

Think Green, Think Life

Living Together !

Living Together !

Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's
addressed to someone else….Ivern Ball

While coming in the final topic of the eco housing, this sentence
always amazes me! As most of the times we are part of the readers of
the walls as the great man has said! We discus so many issues authoritively,
especially we Punekar have pride in it that even a new born has his
opinion on any of the topics & its birth right for the citizen of this
very city. But when it comes to deliver we always wait for someone
else to do it! May it be wearing helmet or buying subji from the
street hawkers & then hailing all other world for encroachments of the
footpaths!

Now, one will say what’s in it for eco housing? Well eco housing as by
now we know isn’t something directly imported from heavens! Its good
houses made by good people for your good living in them, is the
simplest definition I can provide or have done for myself. And when we
say good houses made by good people, here comes the Social Awareness
factor in picture! How you define someone good when the eco housing
front is the criteria? Rather put it other way can you book the flat
in a project made by the so called Union Carbide (? forgive me for
using specific name but it’s for illustration) However cheap & nice
houses they built. Well the answer will be a big NO by most aware
citizens. And it’s because the deed of a group or maker of the homes
will have to be counted when we call them good & precisely this deeds
we call as Social Awareness!

This particular factor is very less considered in our country while
buying any product why just homes! Because we are poor in
understanding the writing on wall! In western countries the buyer is
very much alert about the manufacturer’s activities on social front &
any single wrong step or even wrong advertising f the product can
hamper the sale of the product. That's why many of corporate giants joins
hands with NGO's or with persons who undertakes tasks of social welfare. One
may call it as social bribing too! We are not talking about
compensating bad deeds but it's to balance the business profits with your
social duty! I often wondered from where huge expenses like research
for wild life or tribal’s come & when I started watching National Geo
or Discover or Animal Planet then right from funding to such
expeditions too broadcasting them is funded by many of the well known
corporate like Shell, Toyota ,BMW etc. Now they know their product is
a automobile which is going to burn fuel & pollute surrounding however
little it may be but they can’t stop making cars neither people can’t
stop buying them! But what they can do is use their resources at least
some apart of it which is generated from making the cars for some noble cause & they just do that!

Look at the scene here in our country, the basic things like counting
trees in Pune city isn’t been possible because of lack of funding! We
say PMC collects enough money from builders & PMC sys builders are
making enough money from continuous rise in land prices! Have ever
anybody listened what the City says! Why we have a good real estate
scene in Pune? Because the city has pleasant atmosphere which comes
from lots of greens around, we have one of the best water resources
here, we enjoy almost uninterrupted electric supply next best to
Mumbai, we have finest medical facilities  for all emergencies ( if
one has money in pocket), We have PMC to pick our garbage however
waste we generate ,we have 20 lacs vehicles & we have petrol to feed
them, we have roads & flyovers to run these vehicles , we have
multiplexes & restaurants of all types for our entertainment ,we have
schools with best environment for our kids to get good education ,& we
have builders who takes care of all our amenities & give us a warm
cozy home to sleep in when we are back home and watch Kanha tigers
roaming in the forest on various channels !

Well well! Just look around & see what lies outside of our 50 km
radius of coziness or even outside of our compound wall of the well
secured complex! Millions don’t have a roof on their head leave apart
education or even basic medical facility! Many don’t have even
drinking water keep apart bathing luxury! We don’t have money to count
the trees in this very city & we are talking up on saving the tigers
in jungles which are hundreds of miles away from us! Have we ever
thought what kind of infrastructure the people there are getting? The
maximum snake bites happens in Chandrpur district where Tdaoba tiger
project is located & they don’t have vaccine arrangement as it has to
be protected at a particular temperature & lights are off most of the
time because of load shading! Don’t think of the arrangements like
rain coats or winter wares where temperature is extreme in changing
seasons! And by sitting in our living room we say Govt has to do
something to save Tigers!

The rural around Pune city are getting supplied by tanker water once
in  2 or 3 days & here we harass our cooperator for minimum 2 tankers
of potable quality in a day that too just when PMC water supply is
kept shut for maintenance! We have invertors fitted by our builders
even for our AC's & TV's & in rural one by one small scale businesses
are closing down because of non availability of the power!
We have school buses to collect our kids from our door step for school
& millions of kids don’t have even proper sitting arrangement in their
schools. Our kids school trips goes to various destinations even out of country too & have we ever thought there are thousands of school goers who couldn’t manage even PMPML’s bus pass also! And we expect the country to prosper & compete with countries like China!

May it be builders or buyers, how many of us have given a thought for
these issues & tries to do something for the same?  The ace badminton payer Saina Nehval who is delight of many Corporates now, wasn’t getting a sponcerer even for her routine training earliear! Sponsoring a
Sangget Rajani or a Race is surely important for business & is one
side of the coin but what’s more important is the approach towards the
less unfortunate side of the life! In this country only it happen  & its shame that an Archer broke her arch during practice & couldn’t go to Ashiad for not getting a sponcerer for buying the new one! Agreed there are good fells in the business but they have to be searched for & that's irony of the
society! It’s a most common fraze “ If there is will there is a way”, so it’s not important to describe what help an individual or a group can do but just keep doing our own share a bit. The need of the time is more & more developers should come forward & make their efforts seen to the society about so many issues which 90% population of the country is facing! And more & more flat
buyers should ask their builder about his contributions for such cause
& not just about the amenities or rate negotiation while buying theflat.

Here media’s role is equally important as many a times it’s been seen that they give step son treatment to real estate as when we give front page to land scandles then we should at least give some space to good deeds happening in real estate too, though they may be few right now but appreciation is a great tool to make people do better! There are people like Azim Premji in IT who can donate their all worth for the primary education via their foundation. Imagine what we can do if the whole real estate industry comes forward for the two very basic aspects i.e. Education & Child Health Care!

Again many will say what’s this to Eco Housing? Well guys all those
who claims to build eco housing & who wants to live in them, they all need
to look beyond our houses first to all these realities around,
acknowledege our own responsibility towards them & then we might be
able to do something about them & then only we will be entitled to call
ourselves eligible for living or making Eco Housing! As Eco housing isn't just building the buildings but it’s building a society!

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev
Envo_power Committee,Credi,Pune

Please do visit my blog to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani !

http://visonoflife.blogspot.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16939159@N05/sets/72157624239269202/

www.sanjeevanideve.com

Think Green, Think Life