How to Attract Customers... and Keep Them: Think Like a Healthcare Network

Welcome back to our "Tips and Tricks Tuesday" series, which highlights articles around a monthly theme. October's theme is "Never Lose Another Client." Read on for tips and tricks on maintaining long-term relationships with your clients:

In a healthcare network, the emphasis is not solely focused on providing care during health crises. It's also about preventive care, monitoring, and maintaining overall health. Drawing a parallel, real estate brokerages could benefit from adopting similar technological innovations to enhance client engagement, streamline processes, and provide a more efficient and consumer-focused experience. The result — a trusted, lifelong partnership between brokerages and their clients.

The Patient Portal for Real Estate

Much like patient portals encompass a diverse range of features aimed at enriching patient experience and facilitating comprehensive healthcare management, a homeownership portal could provide a centralized platform with a wide array of features to enhance the homeowner experience.

1. Access to Important Records

Patient portals provide patients with secure access to their electronic health records (EHRs), including lab results, medications, treatment plans, and vaccination histories. This empowers patients to stay informed about their health status and make well-informed decisions.

Homeowners can access detailed information about their property, including transaction records, home warranty information, product warranty information and manuals, paint colors, make and model of roofing material, and anything else that the homeowner wants to keep a record of.

2. Ability to Select Providers

Healthcare networks provide patients with the flexibility to choose from various healthcare providers within a network. This allows patients to select the specific doctors, specialists, hospitals, and clinics that meet their needs. It also provides them with the assurance that these providers are working together and sharing information to deliver coordinated care.

Real estate brokers operate similarly by building networks of various providers in the broker's homeowner network. These networks can include lender partners, insurance providers, title companies, contractors, and more, which allows brokers to offer clients a full suite of services related to buying, selling, and maintaining their homes.

3. Secure Messaging

The patient portal's integrated messaging system enables secure communication between patients and healthcare providers. This real-time communication streamlines inquiries, appointment scheduling, prescription refills, and clarifications, reducing administrative overhead.

This is a massive opportunity for homeowner portals. When a consumer requests a service, the homeowner portal will automatically send pertinent information regarding that service to the service provider. If the consumer prefers multiple quotes, the portal can send the request to multiple service providers with the information that they need to bid on the job. By sharing necessary details with all potential providers simultaneously, homeowners can make more informed decisions and select the best option.

4. Personalized Information

Patient portals often offer personalized health education materials, wellness resources, and disease-specific information, fostering patient understanding and self-management of health conditions.

Just as patient portals offer tailored health information and resources, the homeownership portal can offer customized maintenance information and options for homeowners to manage their homes effectively. By organizing over 50 of the standard maintenance tasks that come with a home, the portal can empower homeowners to better understand the needs of their homes and make informed decisions about whether to handle maintenance tasks themselves or schedule a professional service provider. This kind of approach can lead to improved homeowner satisfaction, increased property value, and overall better management of one's living environment.

Summary

Brokers can build long-term relationships with homeowners, providing ongoing value and support beyond the initial transaction. By offering a comprehensive digital platform that assists homeowners in managing their home, brokers can foster a sense of trust and connection. Homeowners would then be more likely to return to the same broker when buying or selling a new property, as they have already established a relationship and familiarity with the homeownership portal with their broker being top of mind throughout the journey.

Shannon Baldwin is Vice President of Marketing at Milestones.