It’s amazing what some companies take for granted.

It’s amazing what some companies leave on the table.

It’s amazing what some companies don’t do to blow their customers away.

It’s sad how little most companies invest in building affection with their customers. I could be talking about major real estate brands. I could be talking airlines. I could be talking about phone carriers.

My Verizon bill

After nearly dropping dead from the shock of my January cell-phone bill, I dialed 611 while pacing a trench in my living room.

As it turns out, the culprits were the hordes of Verizon folks who’d switched to AT&T over the holidays, causing my free mobile-to-mobile minutes to plummet. The result: Hundreds of new billable minutes added to an otherwise stable monthly bill.

Just like that.

Verizon could have built an alert of some kind that recognizes when we, the loyalists, are on the threshold of a violent overage. But they didn’t.

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AT&T partnered with Apple to create that new bond. It’s working. Verizon, on the other hand, continues to push its “Can you hear me now?” campaign as it remains deaf to the gripes of its customers.

And this is my point: In the face of today’s market, with all of the issues facing the American homeowner — from shrinking equity to volatile credit markets to impending foreclosure — what new bonds are real estate brokers creating? What new offerings or alerts are brokers presenting to past customers that could not only bring immediate benefit, relief, information or counsel to consumers, but also could assign some new sense of value for brokers and their brands?

Vendors: In the face of struggle, in light of the market and shrinking sales, what are you doing right now to drive new products, services, tools and pricing back to your current broker client base? Are you reengineering your technologies? Are you enhancing your old platforms? Are you working with modern code or are you just sticking to the same old, same old in hopes that your clients just continue writing checks because you’ve mistakenly confused the futility of finding a better vendor with loyalty?

Can you hear me now?

A new cell-phone carrier will one day emerge with a Zappos-like service ethic, an Apple-like retail experience and a Starwood-like rewards program built to cultivate affection and loyalty. Or not. What interests me is what this would look like in real estate. From consumers within the industry to homeowners outside it, all one has to do is gaze out across the landscape to see the millions of unclaimed, disloyal, stuck hearts who are looking, yearning and hoping for something they can fall in love with.

Don’t wish the cycles would turn; turn them yourself.

Marc Davison is a founding partner of 1000watt Consulting. He can be reached at marc@1000wattconsulting.com.

***

What’s your opinion? Send your Letter to the Editor to opinion@inman.com.

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