I have never understood why technology companies charge their own customers for technical support. At Realty Times, we have never done so and never intend to.Tech support is expensive, but we feel that it is well worth it in customer satisfaction. In fact, we pay an outside service to enable us with live chat and live talk support so that we can expand our customer services beyond our own e-mail and phone support.

But for most companies, customer support is treated as a profit drain, making it difficult for corporate visionaries to see the sales upside to providing excellent tech service. And that can pose a significant risk. The adoption of technology is hardly intuitive for most users, and real estate professionals particularly rely on hand-holding support to encourage them to integrate ever-changing and increasingly complex technologies.

If an application service provider (ASP) doesn't get this simple point, then it could be handicapping its own sales. Worse for providers, word gets around among users whether a product is good and whether support is there when it is needed.

Real estate application users have a universe of listservs(tm), user groups, message boards and chat rooms that they can use to discuss the merits or lack of merits to specific products. That puts ASPs in an interesting position. They must monitor all these sites or lose the unique opportunity to communicate with the users who are in the position of recommending or slamming their product to potential users.

According to Jim Lee, a Knoxville broker, the user groups are designed to help agents cut down on the time and expense of getting customer support directly from the ASP. To that end, he has established several user groups on Yahoo!. "I started a user group for Online Agent, and there's also one for Top Producer," says Lee. "Both spun off of the e-PRO alumni group."

The purpose? To help get the most out of marketing and productivity software, says Lee. "It's hard to find information on these products," explains Lee. "It's time-consuming and frustrating because you have to call them most of the time to get information and a lot of them charge a fee for them to help you. With the user groups, it is fast and economical, and you can set them up for nothing."

In theory, the user groupies help each other. "One online user told us how to change the default margins of all the letters in the Online Agent database, and with the user group, we have a record we can go back to and reread how to do it. It save me a phone call and a lot of time doing the letters individually," says Lee. "Most contact managers don't have the best word processing so that can take a lot of time, but this person showed us how to do it in about eight lines of text."

How does word get around? "Word of mouth," says Lee. "It's a valid concept and one that has yielded some surprising results.

Word also gets around the ASPs. "One lady from Online Agent contacted me and asked me if she could join," says Lee. "As it turns out, she was the product manager. She is in charge of building it - what better resource could you have?"

VISTAinfo product manager Jolene Voigt did indeed contact the Online Agent user group. Under the moniker "patqsuperagent," Voigt has volunteered to answer technical questions for agents and has also authorized a sales representative and lead tech support person to participate in the Online Agent user group. She also uses the user group to float balloons, new ideas that Vistainfo is planning for its Online Agent productivity software. "We haven't put any upcoming ideas out there yet, but what we have done is posted downloadable updates to the software," says Voigt, "and we'll tell them what's coming and what enhancements we have planned."

Is monitoring the user group useful? "We just found it a few weeks ago and it hasn't been around that long, but it has been useful already," replies Voigt. "The users seem to be very knowledgeable about the product and technology."

Why not ask Lee and others to call customer support? "Jim said he had converted from a different product and he wanted to start the group to get tips and idea from other users," explains Voigt. "One is a log in screen and he was the only one who didn't want to use it, so he posted a way to make it go away through utilities. These are ideas that you wouldn't necessarily go to a customer support to change."

Another example is the benefit of brainstorming online with other users, says Voigt. "One participant asked if anybody had any new, creative activity plans, which is one of the functions of Online Agent. You can start 60 days before closing and all those activities get automatically put on your calendar. For prospecting you can get creative. You met someone at a cocktail party and you can put them into your software and launch a prospecting plan that might begin with "It was so nice to meet you." Then every month it would prompt you to send them something. Dave Beson has these plans and letters included, one year after closing, two years, and so on. These are things that have already been created that you can load into the software. It's also compatible with other things - Rolf Anderson has templates that import into the presentation designer and these are all things a user could do on their own, and you can save time by buying someone else's knowledge base."

That's great for the agents, but how does the company make out? "The value to us is that they will make enhancement suggestions, since they know we are monitoring the group," says Voigt. "Is it winning converts? I think it will. It hasn't been active long enough to give results, but someone who is considering one product over another might ask these users their opinion."

Homestore and Top Producer spokesperson Dan Wool says, "We would prefer that the customers talk to customer service because we have a terrific infrastructure, geared to give specific help, but we also think it is great the Realtors can seek out their peers."

Published: July 16, 2001

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Blanche Evans is the award-winning senior editor of Realty Times, the Internet's leading independent real estate news service. She is featured daily on the Realty Times Video Network in the "Realty Viewpoint" segment. Blanche has been named one of the "25 Most Influential People In Real Estate" by REALTOR Magazine, and has been twice recognized as a "notable." In 2005, she was named "Top Reporter Covering the NAR" by Delahaye-Bacon's. Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. To contact Blanche, email her at . For more articles by Blanche, click here.