The real estate market is full of builders with a lot of compliances to adhere to. This can sometimes cause a delay in attending to the grievances of customers. A strong escalation management system is required in any given real estate entity to save their customer base. But what is escalation in real estate?
Escalation in real estate has two different interpretations. The first one is the usual escalation related to customer management and the second is related to price escalation. Nowadays, a lot of real estate contracts have an escalation clause embedded in them. Now, you might be wondering: what is an escalation clause in real estate? Let’s understand this with an escalation clause real estate example.
Suppose you are interested in buying a property. You make an offer to the builder and after deliberations and negotiations; the builder accepts the offer on some x amount. However, you’re not the only person bidding for that property. If there is another person who quotes a larger sum, then according to the real estate contract escalation clause you will be willing to pay a higher sum (as mentioned in the clause) to the seller.
How does an escalation clause in real estate work?
Escalation clauses have long been a significant addendum in real estate contracts. However, the Covid outbreak has increased the use of the escalation clause in Real Estate. This has been due to the increase in competition for investment in premium real estate projects. It is when pent-up demand has made the housing market even more competitive. While the escalation clause for real estate varies significantly, it consists of a few basic components, such as:
- The original offer of purchase price
- Price escalation in proportion to the competitive bid concerning the original accepted price.
- The maximum amount is reflected on the original property price when multiple offers are in effect.
Now that we’ve got a broad picture of the difference between escalation clauses and escalation management in general, let’s dive deep into how you can use escalation management in your real estate business.
Recognising Escalations Beforehand
Escalation in real estate is inevitable since there are a lot of intricacies involved in dealing with real estate properties. A lot of capital is involved, so it is always advised to have a broad picture of the market and target audience. This helps in identifying some of the probable issues early on and can help anticipate how to handle escalation before it affects your business. The perfect example of this can be the current market sentiment after the outbreak of Covid-19. The real estate sector was taken by surprise and the looming uncertainty along with less experience and technological equipment to deal with such massive real estate escalation caused a lot of losses to real estate.
The real estate sector was apprehensive looking at the nascent stages of this unprecedented event: it happened on such a large scale that the escalations went out of control. So, the cutting edge technology that we have now, such as real estate CRM software, can help keep such occurrences to the minimum in the near future. However, due to a lack of awareness of such issues, upcoming real estate entities face a lot of setbacks early on. Thus, doing market research along with the latest disruptions and technological advancements in the real estate sector helps to keep customer management streamlined and helps spot problem areas where escalation can happen beforehand.
Put an escalation process into practice
No matter how good your customer service is, it is impossible to take care of every customer at all times. Most of the time you will be either short on manpower or some inexperienced customer relationship manager can commit a mistake. When such an issue arises and the problem is beyond solving, escalation management comes to your rescue. But knowing this fact will not yield any results. You must train your relationship managers to perform better in such situations and follow a streamlined process to have an escalation management workflow in place.
This makes the escalation management process an important part of retaining prospective customers. Moreover, you need to establish a hierarchy with a strong team of experts who will step in whenever there is a cascading escalation to handle such situations. Using real estate CRM software automates the management to handle the straightforward issues without any hassles.
The CRM software by using Connected Customer Conversations eases the conversations between customers and the real estate entity. Furthermore, it maps out the general issues which most of the customers face. This helps you to weed out such problem areas to eliminate or reduce them. The clever integration of real estate CRM with skilled professionals can de-escalate the unfavourable customer situations and save them from incurring any bad outcome for the company.
How to deal with escalated issues
Automated escalations can help in saving new leads. Multiple clients and constant engagement with a large clientele can cause new leads to get less attention, causing a lead to be left in limbo. Any such issue can be easily diverted by automating email & SMS to the salesperson’s manager. It is further important to ensure your leads get serviced promptly and are sent customer-centric emails whenever there is any lapse.
Escalation management is a crucial part of any business process and real estate is at the forefront. Understanding real estate escalation management makes it easier for you to handle your sales environment in a systematic and streamlined manner. So, maintaining proper escalation management and handling escalated instances in inappropriate ways are necessary to achieve smart business targets.
Sell.do’s CRM technology is providing the complete package for escalation management. Its process management software has all the cutting edge methodologies to automate all your escalations and convert your leads. Sell.do’s real estate CRM is a productive and profitable platform that will ensure your leads get a prompt response with its engaging solutions that will help retain your customers.