The estate and letting agencies which have provided the most consistent levels of high customer service are to be recognised with a special new award at next year's ESTAS.
To mark the start of a new decade and ten years of partnership with Zoopla, The ESTAS is launching The Zoopla Xcellence Award.
Gold, silver and bronze awards will be presented to the sales and lettings agents which have achieved the highest national feedback rankings from 2011 to 2020.
To qualify for the new award's final shortlist, agents must enter the 2020 awards.
"All great businesses have to perform consistently to stay successful – like the best sports teams, they never rest on their laurels," says Simon Brown, founder of The ESTAS.
"As we head into the next decade with all the opportunities and challenges that it will bring, we’ll pause for a moment and salute those agents who have performed at a consistently high standard."
"The Zoopla Xcellence Award will be the ultimate ESTAS accolade and competition is set to be fierce," says Brown.
Charlie Bryant, Zoopla's chief executive, comments: "After ten years of partnership with The ESTAS, this is a great opportunity to mark our flourishing relationship, and to give agents the chance to be recognised – regardless of their size or location – for going that extra mile."
The ESTAS 2020 – the 17th consecutive annual event - is set to take place on Friday 15 May at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. It will be attended by over 1,000 agents, property professionals and suppliers and the ceremony will once again be hosted by TV property expert Phil Spencer.
A national customer service award scheme with winners selected purely on customer feedback, The ESTAS recognises the best estate and letting agents, mortgage advisors, conveyancers and industry suppliers.
The results are determined by customers who have experienced a property firm's full-service delivery filling out ESTAS surveys, with approximately 45,000 submitted by consumers each year.
You can find out more about The ESTAS here.
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Having sold a couple of properties recently and seen the market from the consumers side, Id say that most agencies promoted an award for one thing or another and dont get me started on reviews..... customer comments, testimonials and awards are no longer the differentiator they were.
Lastly, out of the 45000 consumers mentioned here, how many were failed sellers? Thats the segment of customers as an industry we woefully overlook when getting feedback on service.
Its like a holiday company leaving half its travellers stranded abroad and then asking for feedback from the ones who were returned home without a glitch. Massively misleading.
Michael no agent, or any business for that matter of fact, is going to actively seek out reviews/comments/votes from an unsatisfied customer or client. Although, there is the question that, if someone doesn't pay you a penny, are they really a customer? That said, anyone unhappy with an agency can freely post reviews & comments (justified or not) and for any agent entering The Estas- they can vote (good or bad) via the links on The ESTAS website and the agent can't stop this.
What is refreshing about The ESTAS is that it is clients that have paid for your services (vendor or landlord) or tenants (all from the last 12 months) that can vote and say what they really think. Cleverly, to negate agents cherry-picking their biggest advocates, The ESTAS apply a clever algorithm that factors in both average score (%) AND the number of votes cast- identifying that maintaining a high score on a high volume of votes is a clear sign of quality and is increasingly challenging to achieve.
There is no 100% way of guaranteeing you will get a perfect service no matter the company, country or spend- but this is one of several ways to make the best choice possible.
Whilst we do very few sales and do not enter any sales orientated awards for that reason, my concerns for vendors voting when having not paid a penny are: did the vendor go against the agents list price advice? Did they pick the agent that gave the highest val regardless of the evidence presented? Was the property well kept & presented? Were reasonable offers received but declined? Was a sale agreed but failed for a myriad of reasons outside of the agent's control? and on and on.
By focusing on paying clients (and their awards success at The ESTAS requiring a high volume of votes)- then this should mean you can rely on the agent being above average in completing sales and delivering above & beyond those clients' expectations.
For all these reasons we feel The ESTAS is a unique award compared to the others across the sector.
Hi Michael, ESTAS customer reviews can only be completed on or after completion.
Thanks for the comments. Monitoring customer churn is critical in many industries and an important part of the feedback loop. As an industry we could be better at asking for that and learn a lot of lessons about our businesses in the process.
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