ADVERTISEMENT Feature Aspasia Cloud Informational Series – No.9


New flexibility and transparency with customers


FEW WOULD argue that it would be helpful if something could be done to raise the image of estate and lettings agents in the eyes of the public. Leaving aside any rogue element that will exist in all industries there is a common perception that agency services sometimes appear overpriced and may not seem to represent good value for money. In their defence, many agents believe that the public just don’t appreciate or fully understand the value they add and this appears to be a barrier to improving the situation. For example, many customers struggle to


perceive how a charge based on a fixed percentage of a sale price or rental amount can be equitable or justifiable. Faced with this challenge, some agents offer fixed fees or other similar schemes designed to help overcome this resistance. Of course for those agents who prosper under the former arrangement, perhaps largely in the more affluent areas of the country, there is little incentive to change and with Aspasia Cloud there is no need to do so. Agents can continue with their current successful business practices. For others, however, Aspasia Cloud will deliver new opportunities to offer a more varied array of services and appropriately different charging mechanisms even though in many cases, they are replicating existing processes albeit packaged in a more equitable and more easily understood fashion.uitable and more easily understood fashion.


The easy ParT To accommodate a more flexible charging


mechanism, the first requirement is having the means to break out and categorise the various elements that make up the overall package or service provided. Agents must be able to control these definitions and not be restricted by hard- wired, inflexible software constraints. In this manner an agent can target new potential customers by offering an assortment of services at differing levels to suit any potential customer’s pocket. Everyone knows, for example, that there is a huge potential additional revenue stream from private landlords in the rental market who find the fixed charging structures currently offered by agents too restrictive and


the agency point of view, this should not be feared because they would only charge for the specific services they provided and their associated costs would be in direct proportion ensuring a consistent level of profitability. And of course, just as we see is happening in


prohibitive by means of their inflexibility. Of course agents have the ability to alter the overall percentage fee charged to a customer for a broad classification of product provided but this is not typically accompanied by an individually defined and controlled level of service. To handle this requirement, Aspasia Cloud has


a charging mechanism which allows an agency (either sales or lettings) to define their own range of services from which any potential customer can pick and choose. It may be that in many cases the option chosen is exactly what they would choose now, but the point is that to the customer, the service is much more transparent, clearly delineated and therefore, more readily appreciated and valued for what it is. Add to this a much higher level of automated customer communication made possible by internally integrated two way email services and the overall effect on the customer in terms of the level of service provided can be dramatic.


The DifficulT ParT Traditional agency services are somewhat


stereotyped in nature and tend to be similar nationwide. Where agencies have shrugged off this stereotype, it is often due to perceived levels of customer attention and feedback around a business function that is practised industry wide. This means that what agents actually do for their fees remains largely consistent wherever they operate because there is generally only one modus operandi. But what if there were different ways in which the job could be done, made possible by the customer being able to take responsibility for different elements of the job if they wished to do so themselves? From


Aspasia Cloud is the first fully integrated cloud technology software solution for agents involved with residential sales, lettings and property management. This informational series has been designed to explain how the software differs from other solutions and what that means for agents who use it.


For further information please go to www.aspasia.net. Previous articles in the series can be found at www.propertydrum.com/articles/aspasiacloud


PROPERTYdrum JANUARY 2011 15


so many other industries, customers are increasingly opting to do so many things themselves because this is being made possible by use of the Internet. Within Aspasia Cloud there are three core aspects that are opening up any manner of new opportunities for a heightened level of direct customer intervention or involvement. They are: total hardware and browser independence, the integration with other web based services such as Google Apps and finally the total change of emphasis from printed communications to email which is now fully embedded within the software itself. For competitive reasons we do not currently wish to expand on the detail of these forthcoming innovations and indeed many of them will not be present in the first release of the software. Aspasia Cloud is seen as a continually evolving process reflecting new opportunities presented by the pace of ongoing technological innovation. Nevertheless, the importance is the realistic opportunity for agents to seriously consider significantly higher levels of customer involvement in the future in return for lower fees whilst still maintaining or improving on current levels of profitability. This is being proven in businesses where cloud computing is more widely used.


in summary Aspasia Cloud will offer agents the opportunity


to reclassify and repackage the services they currently offer to customers in the interests of improving their image and opening up new avenues of business opportunity if they wish to do so. Alternatively, as we are at pains to point out in these articles, they can continue to operate exactly as they do now. Central to this new approach is the introduction of significantly higher levels of flexibility and transparency which will also open up potentially new areas of the market currently out of reach as a result of fixed operational techniques and levels of cost.


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