Finding success is fun. Sharing that success with others is even more fun.
Before joining Orchard as a licensed real estate agent (or as they’re known at the company, home advisors), Rachel Bennett was an agent at another company. She enjoyed the role but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.
“As an individual agent, I didn’t have much collaboration with others at all,” Bennett recalled. “I felt very much like I was on an island by myself and any success I had was mine to celebrate alone — that’s not as rewarding as you’d think.”
Looking for a change, she accepted a position at Orchard, a home buying marketplace that, through a combination of tech and the human touch, strives to make home buying and selling painless. It’s a new way of thinking about real estate, with modern tools and easily navigated user interfaces, but there’s another important distinction: It’s much more of a team environment — for agents and customers.
“I wanted to be part of a team so that we could celebrate our collective victories together,” Bennett said. “I had a potential client recently ask why they should work with me. I told them, ‘When you work with me, you aren’t only working with me. We have an incredible team across the board working for you to make sure that you have a fantastic experience.’”
To learn more about what collaboration at Orchard looks like, Built In Austin connected with Bennett. She filled us in on how the company uses customer feedback to further its mission, how agents work with teams across the company to improve products and why she gets more satisfaction now with the support of a talented team behind her.
A WALKTHROUGH OF ORCHARD
Why is customer feedback important for what Orchard is trying to do?
Creating incredible experiences for our customers is an extremely important value and goal for every team member at Orchard. If something isn’t working for a client, we want to know so we can figure out how to change our process and make it better.
A couple of months back, our CEO met with every single home advisor and buying specialist to get first-hand information about what things were working well for customers and what things weren’t working.
Creating incredible experiences for our customers is an extremely important value and goal.”
Delivering a great experience means listening to your customers on an ongoing basis to continually refine what you’re offering. At Orchard, we’ve embedded this feedback loop into our processes. We regularly interview customers who are partway through the process with us to get feedback and see how we can improve. We collect CSAT (customer satisfaction scores) and NPS (net promoter scores) from customers once they’ve finished working with us. We also collect scores and feedback on specific elements on the process, like shopping for their new home, the listing process on their old home and their home closing experience.
As an agent, you’re in direct contact with customers every day. How do you ensure the feedback you receive is heard at the company?
It’s rare that a real estate company gives a voice to the agents when shaping their product or consumer offering — but at Orchard, it’s critical. I check in on my clients on a regular basis to make sure that they understand where they currently are in the process and what will come next.
I never had any issue providing customer feedback. In fact, it’s built into the framework here at Orchard. I meet regularly with our product team to share what I am learning from being on the front lines with customers. Putting together the agent experience with our technology is Orchard’s greatest asset.
For example, there was an instance where a particular customer issue arose that needed to be fixed. I quickly emailed our CEO and several members of the executive team to discuss how we could resolve the issue at hand. They discussed it the following day and immediately changed our process so that it was a better experience for our customers and our team.
Feedback isn’t just for clients
Which teams do you work with to share customer feedback with?
I regularly share feedback with multiple teams throughout the organization. I have a standing meeting every two weeks with our product and technology teams to answer questions, give clarity and comment on what they are planning.
I regularly work with Orchard Title, Orchard Home Loans and our local real estate teams. Orchard has a relentless focus on the customer and we happily accept the opportunity to see where we can improve and make their home buying experience even better.
I never had any issue providing customer feedback. In fact, it’s built into the framework here at Orchard.”
What’s a pain point for homebuyers that Orchard has listened to and improved?
After learning that 60 percent of homebuyers need to sell their current home before buying a new one, we invented Move First to get rid of that pain point.
Additionally, we know that the traditional home buying and selling process is almost entirely offline and requires the customer to coordinate between five different parties, causing unnecessary confusion and stress. We recently launched the Orchard Dashboard to significantly simplify the process. Customers now have one place to manage their entire transaction from buying their new home to selling their old one. No more wondering what’s next in the transaction, wondering how your listing is doing, games of phone tag and one-off paper documents.
I have clients regularly apologize for “bugging me,” even though I constantly tell them that I am always happy to help! It’s important that clients have a place to go for important information any time they are curious about it. No matter the time of day, they’re able to get the answers they’re looking for, whether that’s through me or our dashboard.
Orchard has an incredibly talented team of people. I am proud to work alongside them so we can all have a hand at fundamentally transforming how people buy and sell their homes.
