Why Customer Happiness Holds the Key to Your Future — and Ours

With all the change happening in real estate right now, we often hear talk and uncertainty about the future of agents. To me, it boils down to basic supply and demand economics.

Buying and selling a home remains one of life’s most stressful transactions. Great agents supply great customer experiences. Demand for great customer experiences is growing.

In fact, Zillow Group data shows great agents are crucial to the future of real estate. Buyers, on their first attempt to reach an agent, want an immediate response; great agents immediately respond. Buyers want to feel heard; great agents listen and build trust.

But how do you measure the happiness of each buyer along the customer journey? And why is understanding that so important to Zillow Group’s future?

It goes back to demand. Buyers want nothing more than a great experience. But their expectations of what makes a great experience have changed. That’s because instant gratification drives our economy now. Netflix, Uber and Amazon have helped usher in our click-and-make-magic-happen era.

Think about it: we tap our phones and get what we want immediately. Increasingly, we get what we want without doing anything. Netflix knows me so well, it recommends shows I want to watch that I’ve never heard of. Data and technology make that magic happen.

This is an historic moment, right here, right now. Data and technology are combining in powerful ways to take customer experiences to new heights.

But there’s a difference in real estate: you.

You are the center of the customer’s world and that’s not changing. Our data and technology alone can’t deliver a superior customer experience. We need you as great agents to make customers happy and we want you to stand out for that.

Which is why, for the first time at Zillow Group, we are linking our future exclusively with the best agents.  From now on, only the best will be called Premier Agents.

The word “premier,” after all, means exactly that — the best. If our future is intertwined with yours, we want only the best agents to connect to the millions of buyers who come through our sites.

So we created a data-driven system to map and measure the customer’s journey. We’re calling it Best of Zillow and it’s designed to empower agents to deliver the exceptional experiences that buyers demand today. Our insights will help you transform your business.

You will get visibility into which behaviors drive success — and which don’t — via real-time data from customers throughout the transaction process. Our new scoring system will, over time, reward and promote great agents who have a track record of making customers happy.

We’re counting on you to be as obsessed with superior customer experiences as we are.

In return, we promise you this: we’re going to give you the greatest platform to make it happen. And we’ll keep pushing to get it right so you can deliver exceptional experiences.

You told us you needed better technology to cater to buyers on demand, so we innovated. We launched phase one earlier this year when we moved from leads to connections. Your phone rings less, but that’s the intent.

With connections, 97 percent of buyers who want to talk to an agent connect with a Premier Agent. Prior to this shift that was around 50 percent. That was just the beginning. Quality over quantity remains the very essence of our commitment to you.

We’re taking a risk. We’re establishing a standard of accountability. We’re creating a value around the Premier Agent name because we believe that name should signify greatness and we want to cement our future with great agents.

We’re betting our success on yours.