Realtors, consumers, and lenders today are not just looking for a title or escrow company to close on time and accurately. Today, they’re looking for something remarkable. They’re looking for 6-star care, something worthy of a 6-star Google review.
But wait, I know what you’re thinking: “Google only allows 5 stars ... so why 6?”
That’s exactly the point!
Your title company should offer a customer experience that is even better than Google can rank.
So, what is a 6-star Google review then?
It’s a 5-star review plus a comment that notes how great it was to work with your company, even mentioning a member of your staff by name.
A 6-star review is a glowing review that recounts how well your company took care of them and the emotions they felt while working with your company.
If you want to move your company from service to care, you have to offer your consumers a 6-star customer care experience rather than just 5 stars. If a company is not providing 5-star care, something is wrong.
So how do you make yourself stand out among so many 5-star businesses? Find a way to add that extra star to your customers’ experience.
I always find it interesting how people get into the title business. Years ago, before I got into title, I owned another company in a completely different industry. One day, I was sitting in a Starbucks with a blank sheet of paper in front of me, wondering how I would differentiate my company from others in the same, very crowded industry.
Then it hit me.
If I was going to stand out from the competition, I had to do things completely differently. I couldn’t play by the same rules. I had to change the game--call an audible and get creative. So I filled up that blank piece of paper with ideas of ways that I could do things differently; and to my surprise, by executing on those ideas, my company stood out and my business took off!
Fast forward a couple of years and I was challenged by a mentor to ask myself how I could offer a 6-star experience instead of just a 5-star one. I realized that although my company was doing things “different” than the competition, my company couldn’t create a 6-star experience by just being different, it would require us to go above and beyond to care for our customers. This meant proactively caring for our customers, not reactively servicing them.
I put myself in my customer's shoes and thought like them. Then I built my business around what I would want if I were in their place. The result: a 6-star experience that I could be proud of, and one that our customers could never imagine their lives without.
The question for you is this: what does 6-star care look like for your company?
How can you make your clients’ experience so great that they want to leave a glowing review and could never imagine their lives without your title company handling their closing? Could it be offering warm cookies at the door? Could it be text message updates?
2 exercises to find out what your 6th star is:
- 1. Brainstorm what it looks like to be remarkable
- 2. Role play as your company vs. your competition
Exercise 1: What does Remarkable Look Like?
You can assemble your staff in a conference room (or, more likely, on a video conference call). Together you brainstorm answers to these questions:
- What makes a company remarkable, worth talking about?
- What does it look like to move from being a 5-star closer, processor, or salesperson in the title and escrow industry to a 6-star one? 6 stars is world-class.
- What does it look like to be world-class?
- If an article was going to be written about your company, what would it say? Each person can write down what a 6th star would look like for their particular position.
Record your team’s ideas and decide how and when you will implement them.
Exercise 2: Your Company vs. Your Competition
For this exercise, you can split your employees into 2 teams:
Team A pretending to be your company and
Team B pretending to be your competition.
They go into different offices for 20 minutes to brainstorm what their company does best.
After the 20 minutes is up, both teams return and have 2 minutes to present their ideas (you can write them on a whiteboard).
Afterward, Teams A and B return to their respective rooms and brainstorm again.
Based on the new understanding of what the other team said they do best, each team considers how they might differentiate themselves from the competition. They can ask themselves two questions:
- “How can we be more remarkable?”
- “How can we double down on the thing we say we do best or what can we do now that’s different?”
Teams A and B reconvene and present their new ideas and you can list them on the whiteboard as before.
This exercise is a great way to move from 5 stars to 6 stars because there is no way Team A or Team B will come up with boring responses like “we should check our email” or “we should answer the phone.”
How CloseSimple Can Help You Provide 6-Star Care
How does CloseSimple help you get 6-star Google reviews?
If you received a glowing review from a customer who mentioned your staff member Alice by name, the review probably talks about how Alice communicated to them where your company had been, where you were at, and where you were going throughout the process. CloseSimple helps you communicate like this with our automated text message and email updates. CloseSimple allows you to look like a rockstar and do more than you ever could’ve done!
CloseSimple also allows you to text message realtors so they can actually get important information when they want it. We had one realtor say that whenever he gets a text message from his title company, “it’s like candy in my pocket” because it means he is one step closer to his payday.
In summary, CloseSimple helps you communicate what you need to, when you need to--before realtors even realize they need that information. CloseSimple lets you communicate with realtors the way they want to be communicated with while other title companies are still answering emails with questions from realtors about status updates.
