Customer Service and Technology in Commercial Real Estate

“PropTech”, the current shorthand for the wave of technology entering the commercial real estate (CRE) world, raises fascinating possibilities for how those of us in the industry can optimize the experience of the inhabitants of office and retail properties. Franco Faraudo’s recent article on “The Commercial Real Estate Industry Needs to Get Closer to Its Customer”emphasizes the significant opportunities that CRE industry has to learn from customers, particularly through the use of PropTech, and yet, how the opportunity has been largely missed.

As I consider the “closeness to the customer” opportunity inherent to our work, I believe a much more analog foundation also exists. Specifically, at NAI Elliott we have been integrating the hospitality model of customer service into our work in an effort to close the gap Faraudo points out. If CRE has missed the opportunity to learn from “closeness”, hospitality has maximized it. As we harness the best of hospitality’s customer service practices, we expect to also further close the “closeness” gap by utilizing the more sophisticated data from the PropTech revolution."