eXp Brand Resources & Support – eXp Cloud

Kee Wah Chung, vice president of agent experience

In November, we surveyed all of you for our quarterly eXp Realty survey to find out what we are doing well and what we could do better. The survey also determined our Net Promoter Score, or NPS, which measures overall satisfaction and advocacy of a company’s products or services. At eXp Realty, NPS is a key measure we track of agent satisfaction.

Now it is time to share the results and what we’re working on based on your feedback. We talked to Kee Wah Chung, vice president of agent experience, for an update.

Q: What was our NPS in Q3 and how is it calculated?
Kee Wah: NPS increased 7 points in the third quarter of 2017 to 71, compared to 64 in the second quarter of 2017. The increase largely was attributed to improvement of transaction management workflow and speed of agent commission payments, which were identified as areas of improvement in previous surveys.

NPS is calculated based on responses to: “How likely is it that you would recommend eXp Realty to a friend or colleague?” NPS can be as low as −100 or as high as +100. An NPS that is above zero is positive and an NPS of 50 or more tends to be excellent.

Q: What else did you learn?
Kee Wah: At the top of the list of things that we’re doing well are culture, staff, services and provided technologies. Areas of opportunity included onboarding, continue to build upon the improvements with transactions/commission payments and agent attraction. We also received many recommendations for improvements that we’ll review internally and announce in 2018.

Q: What are you doing with these insights?
Kee Wah: The company recently shared our 2018 priorities, which intentionally match up with your improvement requests from the survey: Agent onboarding, transactions and commissions, attraction practices and communication.

To address these areas, we formed project teams that have deep dived into the current process, tools and resources dedicated to these areas – leaving no stone unturned. We are coming out of these project meetings with priorities and specific actions we can take to drive improvement, quickly. We have already kicked off and completed the discovery process on Agent Onboarding and are in process on Agent Attraction, and Transactions and Commissions.

Many of you already have used the new “An Introduction to eXp Realty” presentation and we’re creating the next version based on your comments. Look for it in January. We also are working to consistently provide videos that tie to the many benefits of being part of eXp Realty. Our timeline has the first videos completed before the beginning of April. We’ll look to feedback from the AAC and others to make sure these videos tie to our accepted practices and culture.

To improve communication in 2018, we will regularly share our learnings as transparency and collaboration are important to the success of eXp. I’m super excited about 2018 and ask all of you to continue engaging with us to make eXp the best it can be!

Look for the next quarterly survey soon!

Inman asked me to speak at their new Indie Broker Summit earlier this week. They have been watching our phenomenal growth and were curious. Curious about virtual officing. Curious about what works … and what doesn’t. And I heard Inman staff recently went virtual, so I was curious, too. So, off I went to San Francisco to speak to about 1,000 brokers and industry leaders about the good, bad and ugly of a virtual office.

We kicked off the morning with an interview-style session that helped the audience learn more about eXp and the benefits and pitfalls of a virtual office. What got the most attention was when I said, “virtual officing is not for everyone.” Many brokers just look at it as a way to cut costs when it really should be about taking money saved and using it to add value back to the agents and their clients. I also saw people taking rapid notes when I talked about how to go virtual. My advice was: Don’t chase after technology and use your agents as guinea pigs. The key drivers should be culture, brand identity and the services you want to provide.

Then I led a group discussion during lunch to a full table. People are people and wanted to hear all the pitfalls of going virtual, but we also had productive conversations about — Why go virtual? What’s in it for me as a broker? How do my agents benefit? Does this help meet the needs of my clients?

It was very evident that brokers were interested in delivering a virtual experience — they just didn’t know where to start or what to think about.

If Inman was curious, attendees were curious. So, I want to share my three key pillars that a broker should consider before going virtual: Agent engagement, change management and agent experience.

• Agent Engagement: Engaging with agents is 10 times more important when going virtual. The agent will no longer have the ability to come into a brick-and-mortar office, have water cooler talks and build their relationships in person. Providing alternate means of engagement is vital such as live webinars (preferably video), local or community events, and a rhythm of business with predictable engagement.
• Change Management: Change is an evolution, not a revolution – it’s a process. Find a standard framework for change that works for you and stick to it. The Prosci ADKAR model is a good place to start. It is a goal-oriented change management model to guide individual and organizational change.
• Agent Experience: What is the value you are delivering back to the agent and what should the virtual experience be? Make sure you engage with agents before any significant change is made, check in and ask for feedback.

I walked away from the experience with a renewed sense of how special eXp is and that we are really doing something different than any other brokerage in North America. We are leading the way in driving next-gen engagement for agents, brokers and staff by delivering a robust, cloud-based experience through eXp World. It’s an exciting time to be with eXp Realty!