| Karl Tatler is managing director of the agent that bears his name and that has won the two biggest titles in the industry within months of each other – Estate Agency of the Year and, earlier this month, Lettings Agency of the Year.
The 18-year-old business now has five offices on the Wirral and has collected no fewer than 38 awards over the last ten years. Tatler is an advocate of using technology and says that his busiest office is his website. EYE’s technology editor Rayhan Rafiq Omar (RFO) talked to him about his thoughts on technology and how he uses it to improve his business. RFO: You’re often quoted on how technology should be embraced. Why is that? KARL TATLER: Our industry isn’t rocket science, we don’t need bespoke this or bespoke that to do it. Many agents don’t embrace tech, because it makes marginal differences. But lots of marginal differences can make a better business. RFO: Can you give a specific example where tech has improved your agency? KT: Behind the scenes, website analytics is hugely important. I have two full time guys looking at this. Our ‘request a market valuation’ tool had loads of people clicking on these buttons but not filling the form in. What we found was the button gets close to a ‘next image’ button and people were inadvertently clicking on it. So we are now redesigning the page so that button doesn’t overlap. Analytics helps monitor people’s journeys through the site and where they leave. Not everyone types in KarlTatler.com, a third of our site visitors don’t come through our home page but from social media and email campaigns. We strive to make the journey as fluent as possible, reducing the bounce rate, and increasing)duration and page views. RFO: Is there any other data you look at, beyond that of your website traffic? KT: Behind the scenes we work really hard using Excel and bespoke software to track competitors and Land Registry to see how the market is doing. We analyse the data to put out a market report. We have a full-time analyst and Excel isn’t good enough for him so he now uses Tableu to measure what our share of opportunity was that week, month. That helps us understand what we’re doing and whether we’re having a positive impact or not. Traditionally agency is reactive and haphazard. We use technology to make smarter decisions. RFO: Smarter decisions in terms of opening new branches? KT: Using the data analysis, you can fairly accurately work out the turnover of offices in new areas where you want to open new offices and establish yourselves in the shortest possible time. RFO: So is opening new offices your day-to-day focus? KT: 80% of my time is working our customer service offering to maximise the productivity of my existing offices. If you’re always looking at the next office, the wheels will fall out behind you. New staff spend time in the existing offices so the culture of the business is maintained both from a staffing well being point of view. RFO: How can you tell staff are maintaining your standard? KT: Standing up when people enter our offices. You should be upstanding without pouncing on people. RFO: Any gadgets that you’re currently playing with? KT: Photography. Bearing in mind that 95% initial enquiries are made online, photography is really important. I know agents who think an iPhone is a good enough camera to take picture of houses. I can’t believe that every agent doesn’t invest in proper SLR cameras and lighting equipment. There are lots of issues with drones. We have a company drone and have been doing our pilot’s licence. The Civil Aviation Authority are very reluctant to give permits. I don’t really like the video walkthroughs, although we use YouTube a lot. Augmented reality is what we’re exploring at the moment. Have a picture of a room, as you move your iPhone round you can walk through these houses. It’s really clever. You can look up the street by just turning your phone, or looking down at the floor. It’s really exciting. It’s about interaction. Allow people to save time, and discover properties they perhaps wouldn’t have done. In comparison, video walkthrough isn’t engaging. You’re stuck there waiting for a video to end. RFO: Any thoughts on Foxtons saying all their offices will have Virtual Reality viewings? KT: That’s not mass market. Mass market is mobile, where you can hold up your phone and see what is for sale on your street. Google Glass bombed because they were too futuristic. But the technology will come back. Allowing people to get more interaction is probably going to be quite big. RFO: What else can you do to improve your customer experience? KT: Having a responsive website that’s engaging. My busiest office is my website. RFO: Do you invest in your website as you would a physical branch? KT: We spend time every single day improving our website. We use Google Analytics all the time to analyse how the website is performing. VWO with is a visual website optimiser, tracks the heat map of our website; what people click and hover over and how we can learn from that. It really helps us to overcome customer frustrations. If you’ve ever been on a website and thought it’s awful, no one ever rings up and tells you. So we have to monitor ourselves. We work really hard on it. Being responsive, it moves all the way down to smartphones. Over 63% of our website traffic is viewed on a smartphone or tablet. It’s all very well saying let’s have a responsive website. The website is more about the properties and the area and less about us. People don’t want to read about you, not really. You may have won some awards or done some charity, but they’re coming to see property and see how to do better with property. RFO: Any thoughts on online agents? KT: The culture of low fees in the UK doesn’t support the US fee model. Going further away from that by talking about online portals. Couldn’t be further away from the rest of the world. The local knowledge and being on the high street, available and visible is really relevant. If someone is talking to a national portal, can I view that property. Is this by the local school? They have no idea. Being local and using local knowledge is really important. RFO: How do you compete and stay ahead of other local agents? KT: We produce a location guide that is unique to us. If you’re looking at a property you can see local facilities and pictures that show you things you didn’t know about that area. It’s a busy part of the site. RFO: Rightmove recently launched an improved school checker KT: It’s incredible how many people don’t know which primary school they want their children to go to. They don’t need to read an Ofsted report, but if you’re moving into an area it’s really interesting. A small percentage of the market for sure. RFO: Do you have any personal tech fails? KT: Spent a lot of money on my previous website only four years ago but it was non-responsive. I had to start again. A website should have longevity. My website was out of date and non-adaptable. Our current site was launched at the end of last year and is one which we can grow and build. The previous website was a website, a mobile app and a mobile website. Everything needed to be done in triplicate. Every update took time and money, especially when Apple updated their phones. RFO: So is your website run in-house, or do you use a website provider? KT: We used an external web design company to build a bespoke site – the engine is Homeflow for all the under-the-bonnet stuff. We do most of the updates and maintenance ourselves and employ sub-contractors for any ideas, issues or enhancements. Little features on our websites matter. A lot of property sites insist on you being registered and signed in. We have likes so you can have your favourites and come back later you don’t need to be registered. It’s one of those features I really like. Ultimately if they like the properties they’ll call and you’ll establish the motivated ones. RFO: You pride yourself on being first with new technology. Why is that? KT: We were the first agent in the north-west to do a website and floor plans and digital photography. Now all those things are standard. We now do plot plans. By doing a scale drawing of the plot we can engage our customers better. RFO: What’s the latest tech you’ve brought into your agency? KT: We’ve recently gone live with Fixflo and know it’ll be immensely useful. It gets to the right person and gets dealt with in the right way. The customer’s journey is as straightforward as possible, where they can report a repair issue 24 hours a day. We can spend more time dealing with the repair than collating information. It is early days, and we have to get tenants to use Fixflo instead of calling in. We’re also working with a company that helps engage with a customer in the valuation. It integrates seamlessly with Land Registry and want it to integrate properly with Rightmove. Rightmove are blocking the third party integration with Rightmove Plus. The entire market in the Wirral is on Rightmove, so it’ll help us all if we integrate the Rightmove Plus data into a more engaging format than Rightmove can produce. It’s called Acaboom and is by the same guy that invented floor plans for agents, Brian Farrell. If they get the integration with Rightmove it would make it a brilliant bit of software.
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Comments (13)
Let me tell a little story about how good an agent can be. It was an office letting but same rules apply.Newly arrived in Brum from London as an agent and received an enquiry from a small computer company from Surrey wanting a small regional office close to New street station .Being a good agent as I was I dutifully assembled a number of other agents details and arranged a number of viewings They arrived by train and I accompanied them on 6 viewings One of the letting agents said on a viewing Ive got something in Halesowen which could be of interest Ive got my car parked close by shall we all hop in and view . I smiled ,I thought nice try sunshine Anybody knowing Brum knows it i would be difficult to find anywhere as far away from New Street as Halesowen They agreed . I thought this is going to be interesting as we threaded our way out of Brum to Halesowen a good 25 minutes away It was a big 30k empty office block with 5k open plan floorplates they only wanted 1500 sq.ft The market was not very good at the time He said no problem we can partition it up agreed the deal there and then with some extras thrown in .They took it I was gobsmacked I hope he got treble fees There they were 2 months later later with a single light on rattling round in this cavernous building The moral of the story is that any person coming into your office for a 2 bed flat in Muswell Hill hill l can end up buying a 4 bed detached in Godalming It just needs agood agent to show them how! or perhaps employ all your neggies from Birmingham!!
I dont think websites are that important. Its probably proactive marketing that they do in the market place to then drive customers to the website that is important.
i ve been tring to pinch ideas for years off other agents and websites dont give anything away.
ive got a sneaky feeling that after 20 years in the business its your name that is important.
i.e.
most successful agents names begin with nothing more then a G!!
Foxtons
Connells
Carl Tattelr
You can thank RIGHTMOVE for this..i.e no rolling directory to make it fair on agents with
Stallards
Winkworths (admit quite successful)
I wonder whether it’s worth conducting some research on how vendors choose an agent…
Possibly they do a little research apart from choosing Buggins down the golf club or the lodge.Maybe they trawl Rightmove Perhaps they might even walk into theiri office and see how a customer is treated What is for sure the days when a partner can turn up and scmooze and as soon as the instruction is won sent down to the front desk and thats the last you hear from hum until the bill is sent has hopefully gone My acid test is ask an agent if they want to see inside the attic Its amazing how many still dont Once instructed do a mystery shop ring them up desribe your property as one you are looking for and see if you actually get offered it and vote with your feet if you dont
gwrth….no its definatly simpler then that…look on a directory,,,ring top 3 agents..unless you know the bloke from school etc.
i work in a market town,,very difficult place to work but people from out of the area who go on brand, office, design etc use us a lot..
I cannot find any landlord fees on the website?
What a dissapointment! Firstly, the article was far too long. This guy was saying all the right things and then went onto his website and it was awful! Its certainly not the worst I’ve seen, but it’s certainly not one that’s modern or one that looks like it’s owned by a tech focused person. The branding, the layout, It’s all stuck in the 80s, but with the addition of video. I’m talking from experience. If this person can get an article on here about his amazing site and tech, then I should have an article on here every day.
I’m contactable on rayhan@wigwamm.com – would be happy to follow Karl’s interview with one from you.
Think you are being a bit harsh on the website, the graphic / colour scheme could be improved upon but a very well set out and informative website. Lots of content and interaction which is what google want.
We have looked at Acaboom ourselves. Nice bit of kit. For agents that look to sit down and inform vendors its super. If you are the type of agent that pops in and plucks a number out the air and hope your “winning” personalty gets the instruction, probably not for you.
Hi, smile please.
If you’ve looked at the Acaboom offering in any detail I would love to know how you think it compares to that which a certain Mr May has been trying to discuss with you for many moons now.
Might there be a chance, one day soon, that you succumb to temptation and give him an hour* of your time?
* Plus VAT. Times are approximate and subject to change without prior notice. Please check with the bill payer before calling. No calls are recorded or used for training purposes.
lol, it was called the big interview so thats why it was long. nice to learn something for a change rather then have depressing headlines about purplebricks and letting agents..