Trulia Gives Lesson in Agent Ratings

WAV Group did a study that showed that 50 percent of real estate agents did not respond to online inquiries. Trulia, a third party portal operated by the Zillow Group, understands that the strength of their site is largely pinned to the responsiveness of real estate agents. They often assert themselves as a consumer site first, even though they derive their revenue from agent and broker advertising.

Do you know any other industry where a salesperson will not call you back? Perhaps this is only for real estate.

When WAV Group did the study, we found that the poverty of agent responsiveness not only resided on third party websites, but broker websites too. Trulia sent me an auto responder when I tested a broker's lead response that is excellent. Rather than ask me if the agent responded, they asked me to review the agent!

Broker Best Practice: If you have a service for agent reviews, request a review as an auto-responder, like this example from Trulia.

Remember, one of the things that the Zillow Group has combined is the maintenance of agent pages, including reviews. Perhaps the Zillow Group is doing brokers a favor here by stimulating agents to respond to consumer inquiries using the threat of a bad consumer review.

Remember, too, that brokers can embed their Zillow/Trulia agent reviews on their broker or agent websites using a free widget. Check out this page of widgets to see everything they offer:

http://www.zillow.com/webtools/widgets/