The residential division of Knight Frank has won the Best Customer Focus award at the UK Customer Satisfaction Awards 2023.

Knight Frank was recognised by the judging panel for its strong customer experience strategy and innovative ideas. 

In its submission the firm majored on its extensive customer research, its values and behaviours, and how these have had a major impact on its culture helping to shape interactions with colleagues, customers and communities. 

Externally, Knight Frank’s ‘Settle for more’ campaign demonstrated the firm’s client focus in sharing with customers its ambition to support them and go above their needs to be a Partner in Property

Tim Hyatt, head of residential at Knight Frank, says: “We started looking strategically at our customer experience six years ago, since then we have been on a transformational journey which has touched the four corners of our organisation. It has become part of our DNA, we no longer need to ask our people to think in a customer centric way – teams really do want to offer the best possible service and understand how much it means to clients.”

A statement from the firm says it was in 2016 when its residential board recognised the need to evolve its approach as a response to market changes, increased competition, threat of online and ever-shifting client behaviour and expectations. 

To understand how to evolve and differentiate itself, Knight Frank undertook internal and external research, consisting of workshops, office visits, mystery shopping and qualitative and quantitative surveys. In total the firm contacted over 30,000 of its clients. 

Hyatt concludes: “Outstanding customer experience builds long term loyalty which in turn has a significant impact on financial performance, motivating employees, driving repeat business and referrals, whilst critically reducing operating costs. Therefore, the next stage of our customer experience evolution is all focused on developing long-term commitment and advocacy to the Knight Frank brand, resulting in increased loyalty, profitability and growth.”