Look at this rubbish. Has it come to this? I was walking down one of the back streets in Covent Garden yesterday and saw this Winkworth for-sale sign. The ‘2 bed’ shitty little sub-label attached to the sign really, really winds me up.

If, Mr Winkworth, you are going to elaborate on the property, perhaps you could see your way to also putting a text-for-more-info option?

Or is this outwith your gift?

It really is ridiculous that, in (almost) 2007, I am reduced to having to place an 8k analog phone call to a branch that is SODDING CLOSED WHEN I CALL to get more information, becuase that marketing approach suits the property agent.

It is simply not good enough, especially for a firm with the reputation of Winkworth.

Hellooooooo? Helloo? Mr Estate Agent? Yes, you do know the whole nation is walking around with mobile phones, yes? We don’t all want to wait 12 hours before your branch SODDING OPENS to query the property’s details.

Just ‘doing internet’ isn’t acceptable. Add mobile querying. Get on with it. It’s a total arse having to take a SODDING PICTURE of your sign board so I can remember to call.


Cathartic, that.

Now, is anybody listening? …. hello? 😉
– Taken at 12:43 PM on December 08, 2006 – cameraphone upload by ShoZu
We’ve writen an app that allows estate agents clients to send a board code to a short code, then the client gets a mms back which gives a full description, price, floor plan and 3 pictures.
It works on hundreds of phones and costs pennys to run. We’ve also got a backend that lists all the inquiries phone numbers and the property they were interested in so a follow up call can be done.
This can work in papers ad’s too, so you can get all the details you want while on the train etc.
It comes out in the new year…
we wrote all of this two years ago, including what Mark has done with returned mms and wap pages as well as plain texts…we even sourced the special boards. and did the UK estate agents “get it”? did they fuck. bunch of backward sales morons who only give a damn about where their next rip-off sale is coming from. too stupid to get any kind of technology. Good luck Mark, maybe they have woken up in the past few months, but estate agents are one of the hardest sells you’ll ever have.
One of their greatest excuses was, and I quote verbatim “the staff we employ to install the boards are, hhmmm how can I put this, not one of the brightest bunches, and so we would end up with the wrong codes in the wrong gardens”. Christ, this country is fucked…
steve
ps pardon my french, but estate agents bring the worst out of me…
Whilst when someone comes to meet me and says ‘I have a revolutionary idea – it’s a billboard SMS service for estate agents’, I tend to grown (In the same way as when someone goes ‘It’s a bit like Flickr/Delicious/Myspace BLAH’) there is no doubt in my mind (and I’ve got proof) that this market is ripe for mobile service exploitation.
The issue I see day in day out is people clutching to an idea that they are 100% assured ‘Will Work’, and unfortunately in most cases they know absolutely nothing about their prospective market, and as such are doomed to failure.
In this example, Steve is very much right in as much as Estate Agents are tricky to deal with at the best of times, and more importantly there is an issue with creating bespoke printing for each billboard. Even without bringing into conversation the aptitude or otherwise of the chaps that put up the billboards, there would a large cost and time implication in having a unique code on every board.
The market that has been very successful for Estate Agencies in terms of mobility is in using SMS as an intergrated part of their CRM capabilities. I.e. when a 2 bed in Croydon comes on the market, the right ‘hit-list’ is solicited to. The cost of an SMS likely cheaper than a call to a mobile, and should a party be interested they can call the office back. I’ve worked with companies with 400+ branches, and also minnows.
In the billboard scenario, i’d give the info seeker the option once they have called the advertised number to speak to the office (in working hours), and/or the option to garner more info without needing to speak to someone directly (Most agencies want you to call rather than just get info straight away since it allows them to register your details and up sell to you – something they believe a agent can do far better than a wap page/mms – however as most don’t operate 24hrs the option to get more info and leave your details may be something that only clicks in after hours).
If the agency does choose to allow the person to gather info without speaking to an operator/agent, then to identify the property the person wants i’d either use an on the fly LBS request (their call can be their approval since this is an ‘Active’ service, assuming their CLI is not withheld) before directing them (via wap url/push) to a site with the possibilities in that area. Alternatively I’d have them go through a very simple IVR tree to determine the property they are at (i.e. if it’s in Covent Garden press1, if it’s 2 bedroom press 2, if you are in Cuthbert Crecent press 3) before directing them to a similar wap site. The secondary mechanism (the IVR tree) could also be used for those users whose CLI was withheld.
All of that said, Mark, good luck with your launch.. As I mentioned there are areas of opportunity in this market, it’s just important to be channeling your efforts in the best direction..
It’s one thing having the technology and products available to do this kind of thing, but another to actually try and persuade the estate agents to adopt it!
At present the estate agents dont really want to adopt new strategies and techniques for selling and letting properties.
However, before i started working with Mark on this project, i was employed as a Technical Engineer for a very large (one of the top 5 largest) construction companies at their research and development centre. and before that i worked as an Architect for another major housebuilder.
The construction industry want (and are actively pushing) this type of technology NOW, and as i have seen many times before, they WILL change estate agents at a drop of a hat if the one they are with wont advertise the way they want them to.
It’s not really up to the Estate agents, do you think they are really willing to loose a contract to sell 1000+ homes a year and the commissions from those sales?
Even small estate agents that may only sell 10 new homes a year cant afford to loose their construction ‘friends’, second hand homes come and go but new houses and apartments are always being build and it’s a steady, regular flow of income (especially as they usually get paid to advertise the properties).
Considering they spend over £500 a week in local/national papers running full page ads, the cost to the agents would most certainly be miniscule to adopt this type of service.
I guess only time will tell.
groan. I meant groan