Future development of CRMs will help agents continue long-term relationships with customers, beyond just a single transaction.

In an interview with Estate Agent Today, the chief executive of Reapit – Mark Armstrong – says rival PropTech businesses concentrate too much on their customer alone.

They fail to pay enough attention to their customers’ customers, he says.

“What we want to provide today is an environment where our customers’ customers – be they a property owner, a property seeker, a tenant or a landlord – those customers keep coming back to agents.”

He says Reapit’s relationship with agents is developed through a platform which is more than just single-transactional.

He cites the example of portfolio landlords who have multiple properties and who may want to know about future properties coming to the market. 

Armstrong believes that by giving agents a single CRM platform on which to have almost every aspect of property information, that landlord can return to an agent they have used in the past and use the data on their CRM to help them decide on future sales or purchases. 

One way of making that CRM as valuable as possible is to develop the maximum number of integrations and containing the maximum information about consumers’ expectations.

“Every time one of [an agent’s] consumers goes online, sends a message, sends a text, it’s like it’s a clue. And every time one of their agents goes in and speaks to someone, takes a note, it’s a clue. 

“And what these clues are starting to give us is they’re starting to tell us when somebody might be looking to buy, when someone like might be looking to sell. 

“And I think the Holy Grail for estate agency is if you can win a listing before the listing even knows it’s going to come to market!”

He says creating that system – help the agent as well as the agent’s customer – becomes what he calls “something magical”.