Customer reviews – the currency of trust

Berlin, March 19, 2019. Property prices are at an all-time high. People who want to be able to afford their own house or property need a competent advisor. So where's the best place to find one? These days, most research starts with an Internet search, says Remo Fyda, CEO of ratings platform ProvenExpert.com. 86 percent of consumers find out about local services online. Independent real estate agency HYPOFACT AG has been using this consumer behavior to its advantage. Caroline Bartz, Marketing expert at HYPOFACT AG describes her company's aim. "We work to finance people's dreams and goals". Competition is huge and other firms spend millions of their advertising budgets. "Our aim is to be as successful as possible with a smaller budget”, she explains. HYPOFACT AG's strategy is to focus on authentic customer feedback.

How it all began

When a firm is aiming to stay close to its customers, it needs to figure out their wants and needs. Customer reviews have always been an essential part of HYPOFACT's marketing strategy – the company started off by using ratings services tailored to their industry. The website counter for an advisor comparison website that registered clicks was what led to the decision for an all-encompassing ratings management system. "We saw that advisors who regularly collected customer feedback often registered over a thousand clicks", says Caroline. This really made them stand out from their colleagues.As a starting point, the company noted the positive effect of customer feedback on individual advisors. Now they had to figure out a system that could benefit everybody.

Developing the concept

For over 10 years now, over 60 advisors in regional offices of HYPOFACT AG have been helping private and business clients acquire property. The goal is clear – to spread the word about qualified financial advice faster and further than before. "Satisfied customers will praise you – all you need to do is ask", suggests ratings expert Remo Fyda. This brings results, since 94 percent of actively collected feedback is positive. The challenge for HYPOFACT was finding out a way for advisors in a network of this size to benefit from professional customer ratings management.
The objective is to have 50 advisors registered by the end of the year – currently only 13 are registered. Here's where modern technology and support from the provider comes into play.

Implementing the plan

Leaving feedback shouldn't be an effort for either advisors or the end customers. So advisors receive a feedback invitation link that they can easily pass on. Customers don't have to register first, which is a big plus, says Caroline Bartz. To get successful results from working with customer feedback, understanding the full functionality of the tool is a basic necessity. "We support our larger customers like HYPOFACT AG during the entire roll-out", explains Remo Fyda, CEO of ProvenExpert. This entails contacting the advisors with the information they need, frequent webinars, tips, suggests for optimization, and an open line of communication for any questions. Headquarters can keep an overview of all regional offices with a master account. This also offers a direct point of comparison for internal quality management. "We no longer offer customer ratings management as an option – it's now a standard component of our brand partner agreements", says Bartz.
And in terms of further measures, a visible "award" of trust can influence decisions in a positive way, so individual ratings seals for advisors are actively integrated into email signatures, ads, print media and as a widget on all websites. Google seller ratings are also used to increase visibility even further.

It's not the destination – it's the journey

All regional locations are being developed on a continual basis. The 13 advisors who can already be rated on the platform have a high level of customer satisfaction. This is reflected in the individual ratings seal for each advisor – in the form of star ratings and a grade. The average rating for HYPOFACT AG is 4.69 stars (VERY GOOD) – and a recommendation rate of 99%. We've been able to clearly ascertain that customers who recommend us online on ProvenExpert are much more likely to recommend us offline, too, says Caroline Bartz. The advantages for the company are control over its online reputation – the average ratings collected actively via ProvenExpert stand at 4.96 stars. Ratings from other sources such as Facebook, miperto or ImmobilienScout24 provide an average rating of 4.57 stars.

About ProvenExpert

Together with Remo Fyda as CEO, ProvenExpert.com has become one of the best-known online platforms for qualified customer feedback and review aggregation in the region of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Since 2011, the referral marketing platform offers targeted industry surveys that companies can customize and use in a matter of minutes to start collecting feedback from customers. The surveys provide detailed insight into the needs of customers and their satisfaction levels, as well as helping to uncover new business potential. The resulting feedback can be easily used for online marketing purposes with ProvenExpert's rating seal and profile and combined with customer reviews from over 380 websites like Facebook, Google, and other platforms. More than 60,000 freelancers, entrepreneurs and large companies use ProvenExpert.com's online surveys to collect customer feedback.