Ubertor Real Estate Blog

From L-R: Uber Trainee Dobi, Uber Cres, Uber Fonzy, Uber Bryan, Uber Trainee Alex, Uber Carl

(Yes, Alex has a Halloween headband on her head. The office is already decorated for Halloween!)

Here’s a quick snapshot of the Ubertor team at the OTD office in Manila. I made the trip to the Philippines a bit under a month ago and it’s been an awesome experience to finally meet, and work with everyone.

We’re doing great things here from expanding our customer service hours (our LiveHelp is now open from 7 AM PST to 10 AM PST), to adding new team members, and brainstorming new ideas to deliver better (and hopefully the best) service to our clients.

If you have any questions about Ubertor, feel free to engage our team and we’ll be happy to help.

Uber Tin is on fire…

Not literally, but in terms of providing exceptional customer service!

A month ago, I wrote a quick blog post about Uber Tin and an awesome testimonial she received from Vancouver Realtor, Neil Chahal. Again, I write about another Uber-Testimonial Uber Tin received from Ottawa Realtor, Joey Marshall.

Another standing applause for Uber Tin!

Hi Bryan,

I just wanted to take a moment out of my day to send a special thank you to Ubertor and their client services team! I’m currently creating my third Ubertor website and came across some issues this week, I was lucky enough to have UberTin patiently walk me through everything on live chat! I now have a brand new google translator on all of my websites which helps greatly due to my city (Ottawa) being a very bilingual city. UberTin has helped me with adding a stylish Twitter widget so now my clients can easily follow me on Twitter! Her response time in Live Chat is amazing, clients like myself really feel like she cares about her job and wants to do her best to help us out! In my opinion, employees like this are what makes big companies successful! Not only does Ubertor have a great quality product but they also have great quality service and that’s what seperates them from everyone else in the industry!

Keep up the great work everyone! Thanks again UberTin!

Sincerely happy client right here,

Joey Marshall
Keller Williams Ottawa Realty

These type of E-mails make my day.

Below you’ll find an E-mail testimonial from Vancouver Realtor, Neil Chahal about Uber Tin’s superb customer service. If you have ever chatted with Uber Tin in Live Help, I’m sure you’ve experienced the same type of service from her. She tends to go beyond her call of duty, to ensure our clients and visitors are well taken cared of.

Nice work Uber Tin!

Hi Bryan,

I’m writing today with regards to one of your employees: Tin. In the few months that I have been working on my website, she has really gone above and beyond with her customer service and I feel that her excellent work should not go unrewarded. She is knowledgable, prompt, and is able to “diagnose” and “treat” website problems with amazing ease. In fact, she is so good at what she does that I will typically wait with my questions until she is on shift, just so that I can work directly with her. I truly believe that she is a perfect model for what the ideal Ubertor agent should strive to be.

Please take this email as an endorsement of her hard work, dedication, and reliability. She says what she will do and then ALWAYS follows through. If I were you, I would certainly consider offering a raise or promotion to an employee as great as Tin.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at the coordinates below.

Thanks Bryan!

Regards,

Neil
–

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog post about continually pursuing growth and learning – both professionally and personally through reading. This week I’d like to share Ubertor’s library. The topics of each book vary and range from business strategy, company culture, leadership, fitness and self-taught, do-it-yourself books.

Team members have access to the books to engage, read and learn from. We’ve followed the Zappos belief that “Study after study shows that engaging employees through learning and education is much more effective in motivating employees than money or recognition. Motivated employees require less supervision, have a better attitude, and are more productive; all these factors will improve your bottom line.” Our library is the first step in this direction.

To get the ball rolling, and our readers pumped about reading, Ubertor will be giving away the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. The 4-Hour work week is the blueprint on escaping the 9-5 by understanding and focusing on determination, elimination, automation, and liberation (DEAL) in your life.

Here is how you enter to win:

1. Become a fan of Ubertor on Facebook (1 entry)
2. Post a comment below how you think this book can effect your business (1 entry)
3. Follow @Ubertor on Twitter and send out the following tweet: (1 entry)

I entered to win a copy of @tferriss 4-Hour Work Week from @Ubertor here http://bit.ly/kOmvmD

Contest ends Friday, June 24th at 12:00PM PST. Retweets are not eligible. Good luck!

If you’ve been on Ubertor.com and Ubertor’s blog today, you may have noticed a chat box pop up on the right side of your screen. You would have also noticed that a member of our CSR team was the one engaging you. And yes, the CSR you see in the chat box is who you are really chatting with.

This new chat feature courtesy of SnapEngage (these guys have one the best customer service teams, by the way) allows our team to help potential and current clients that are browsing our site and blog with any questions they may have regarding our service, product and events.

Taking the support cap off and putting the sales cap on, the tool also allows us to convert potential clients into new Ubertor sign ups. Our team will start online conversations with site visitors, potential clients, at critical times – for instance when someone is stuck with an order or product question and swiftly resolve the question, providing the guidance and information to convert them from visitors to customers. The tool is simply awesome.

I’ve heard many sides of the story, where a group of people find the proactive chat box annoying and even intrusive at times, and others who like it as it shows the company cares about the visitor. All in all, my 2 cents are that if you don’t like it, simply close it. We’re definitely not there to be intrusive or annoying, but instead the latter – we’re here to help and ensure your experience with Ubertor is a great one!

Uber Fonzy! proactively popping up on Ubertor.com (below)

Last week we announced the return of The Real Estate Technology Meetup, which will be held at Ceili’s Irish Pub on Monday, June 20, 2011 at 6:00 PM PST.

The speaker of the evening will be Ubertor and Outsourcing Things Done co-founder, Stephen Jagger. Stephen will be speaking about the benefits of outsourcing in the real estate business.

Both Bryan Garcia (Uber Bryan) and Christine Beltran (Uber Christine) will be on hand, in person, to meet and mingle with all those that show up.

In addition, we will have Cristian Marine (Uber Cristian) and Tin Sanchez (Uber Tin) with us, “virtually”. Yes, that’s right. We’ll have Cristian and Tin, online via Skype at the mixer to meet and greet, as well as answer any questions you may have regarding Ubertor.

How cool is that?

If you want to meet the Ubertor team, in person (or virtually), this is a perfect time.

See you at the Meet Up!

Previous Ubertor Culture Posts:

• Welcome Calls: ‘Ring Ring, It’s Ubertor!’
• CSR of the Month: Marie “Tin” Sanchez (Uber Tin)
• ‘Kaizen’ing’ Your Business
• Ubertor’s Client Service Team Tackle “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber
• The Importance of Handwritten Thank You Cards
• Meet The Ubertor Client Service Team

Here at Ubertor, as soon as someone signs up for a website, a member of our team will immediately pick up the phone, call the new client and engage them via a “Welcome Call”.

A Welcome Call is highly valued at Ubertor, its focus is to do a few things:

• Call the new client as soon as the order is processed.
• Thank the new client for choosing Ubertor.
• Answer any “fresh questions” that a new client may have.

The goal of the Welcome Call is to catch the new client as soon as they’re done the order form, still on their computer and to answer any “fresh questions” still in their head.

We understand Realtors are busy people, and not always at their desks – so it’s a bonus for us to catch a Realtor while they’re on their computer, with questions that need answers. It gives us the opportunity to target our clients needs at the right time.

In such a fast paced world, being able to identify when your clients are available and focused on your product is key to successful engagement, communication and interaction between both parties.

So, if you receive a call from Ubertor right after you sign up, it’s just US, taking the time to ensure YOU are good.

Previous Ubertor Culture Posts:

• CSR of the Month: Marie “Tin” Sanchez (Uber Tin)
• ‘Kaizen’ing’ Your Business
• Ubertor’s Client Service Team Tackle “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber
• The Importance of Handwritten Thank You Cards
• Meet The Ubertor Client Service Team

This week’s post is to recognize Ubertor’s CSR of the Month (for April 2011), Marie “Tin” Sanchez, better known to many as Uber Tin. Becoming Ubertor’s CSR of the Month is no easy feat. The CSR must show exemplary work ethic, produce “world class” type of work, and demonstrate mastery in Kaizen.

Uber Tin has proven all of the above and has gone beyond what we ask from her.

Just to show some of Tin’s accomplishments for the month she was able to accomplish the following:

• Average response time in Live Help: 15.94 seconds
• On the spot solutions in Live Help: 149
• Number of accolades by potential and current Ubertor clients in Live Help: 24
• Implemented Kaizens: 2

If you catch Uber Tin on Live Help, be sure to send a congratulations her way, as it is well deserved.

Congratulations Tin!

If you’re unfamiliar with the term Kaizen, it is defined (by Wikipedia) as Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better”, and refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management.

They key thing to take note of is the “continuous improvement of process”. Kaizen is based on making little changes on a regular basis, always improving productivity.

At Ubertor, our Client Service team document a “Team Kaizen” at the end of their work week, that offers 1 way to improve workflow within Ubertor. Kaizen’s submitted range from simple improvements like adding a knowledge base article for a highly asked question in live chat (submitted by Uber Carl) to documenting step by step procedures for newly used programs like Basecamp for our Design and Client Service teams (submitted by Uber Tin).

In my first post for Ubertor culture, I explained that we are a team of 6. If we calculate how many Kaizen’s are applied per month, that’s 24! Which means, each month our team is improving 24 different aspects of our work flow.

The key to a great Kaizen (and probably the most important aspect), is not only the idea, but also the action plan that follows suit. I like to tell my team that a Kaizen without an action plan is simply a suggestion, and anyone can suggest “this” or “that”. Actions plans must state a clear goal, and ways to achieve this goal.

Test out the Kaizen philosophy with your team, and see what aspects of your business you can improve on.

One of my goals for our team is to continually pursue growth and learning – both professionally and personally. What better way to do so, than to pick up a book and engage it. The Ubertor library has a handful of books to choose from, but as a team, the first book the Client Service team will read is the “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber.

If you’re unfamiliar with The E-Myth, the underlying message revolves around “franchising” your business so that your company’s results are predictable. Here at Ubertor, we use internal tools to do just such. We use tools like Google Apps and Yammer to open communication lines between our employees, and Wikis to document company operations and procedures, so that anyone can learn how to accomplish any task.

The goal of reading The E-Myth for our team is to increase our knowledge on the above and to implement Kaizen in the client service realm of Ubertor. In addition reading The E-Myth as a team will help me answer employee questions like “Why do we use a Wiki?”, “Why do we do things this way and not the other?”. My answer will be simple, “It’s in The E-Myth, seek your answer there.”

Take a quick look at your business. What resources are you and your team using to constantly improve ‘your game’? If you draw a blank, pick up The E-Myth and start there.