Appletree Answering Service

Appletree hosted its second Team Leader Summit in Wilmington, DE from Dec 6^th through the 9^th.  Team Leaders from every Appletree location attended the summit where they heard from Appletree CEO, John Ratliff, who outlined his vision for 2010 to improve the Customer Experience.  Mr. Ratliff also discussed making learning the central theme for the coming year.  In addition, the managers took part in sessions that focused on team-building, coaching, motivation, and Customer satisfaction. It was a tremendous success, and plans are already underway for a 2010 Summit!

As part of continuing education being offered at Appletree, all employees are participating in hour long listening sessions.  During these sessions, they review random calls and ask three questions of each call:  1) Did the caller leave with a positive impression of the business we represent? 2) If you were the customer, would you feel your caller was taken care of; and 3) If you were the owner of Appletree would you use this call to reflect what your business does.  Feedback is given for each of these areas, as well as coaching tips to enhance the call center agent’s call taking skills.  These sessions are used as part of the five (5) hours of continuing education required for each employee within Appletree.

J.A. Dava has been a strategic partner with Appletree for approximately 5 years.  In addition to his very successful real estate company in Ohio, J.A. also represents a service for real estate professionals called the “Home Buyers Scouting Report”.  JA is a much sought after speaker and travels the US constantly training agents and brokers about adding to their “Funnel”  with the Home Buyers Scouting Report.  He refers Appletree every time he signs up a real estate professional on his program.  Appletree answers and returns phone calls from people inquiring about a property and offers them a Home Buyers Scouting Report.  For all that accept this free service, it is estimated that 10-20% that end up buying a house will use the agent that provided them the scouting report.  Outside of work, two of J.A.’s colleagues are currently suffering from lymphoma.  He is running his first marathon to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma society in honor of them.  The marathon is in Columbus, OH on October 18th.  To help J.A. raise funds for research and awareness, please visit: http://pages.teamintraining.org/coh/columbus09/jdavay. 

The common goal for Sales and Marketing is to identify the best prospects and then connect quickly. A recent MIT study shows that if you can catch someone within 5 minutes after they fill out a web-to-lead form, you are 80% more likely to connect with them. If you wait 30 minutes, that likelihood drops to 10%.  Below is a summary of results from a survey by Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a study by Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT, on the topic of Lead Response Management.Kellogg Lead Response Management Survey OverviewOver the course of four months, Dr. Oldroyd surveyed hundreds of companies that drive web leads to their web sites. The survey represented a broad distribution of company size (ranging from “under $10 million in annual revenue” to over “$1 billion in annual revenue.”)  22 survey questions focused on identifying WHEN the best time was to efficiently contact web generated leads, and HOW to generate web leads that qualify and close at optimal rates.

Remember when you were a child and your parents would harp on you to send thank you notes, clean your room when family was coming over or make sure you invited all of your classmates to your party instead of singling people out?  As my experience grows and I interact with Employees and Customers, I am now convinced that our parents constant nagging was a precursor to “paying attention to the details”. I could think of a million scenarios where the little details mean so much.  Remembering someone’s name, following up on a problem to ensure it was not only resolved, but there were no other issues to address or sending a thank you note to a new Customer.  Isn’t that just common curiosity to thank someone for their business?  We live in America for goodness sake; there are more options for Customers to have their needs serviced than anywhere in the world!!!  Being a part the Service Industry where the widgets we sell are packaged in a friendly hello, accurate message and a delivery of that message, it always amazes me to be subject to exceptional service.  The details…  I recently took a weekend trip to Atlantic City with a friend of mine, where we did some shopping, people watching and caught a concert at the Taj Mahal.  During our shopping excursion, we made a pit stop in Tiffany’s and of course, we treated ourselves to a little silver present with a gorgeous turquoise box.  As if the product was not perfect enough, it comes with its own little residence!  And to end it all, 4 days after my return to reality, I received a hand written thank you note from Ambur.  Ambur remembered me, my name, what I bought and how my face lit up when I put on my new necklace.  Of course Ambur was thanking me for my business, but she also made my purchase memorable by paying attention to the details.  Thanks Tiffany’s and Ambur for raising the bar on Customer Service!This blog was written by guest blogger, Candy Myura