Said the pot: The kettle is black!
I’m a hypocrite. It’s official. The girl who’s all about honest feedback has had a [very minor] epiphany: I’ve been a touch frustrated that a very small number of real estate agents aren’t responding well to What-Customer-Say.com… and all the while I’ve failed to see that we at WCS are in the same position as those agents: Neither of us wants anyone to be negative about us.
Just as I expect the agents to take the negative as well as the positive, I should take the unhappy reactions to our site at least as well as I take the kudos we’ve received.
And we have received kudos
Some agents have written to say that this real estate agent rating site is a great idea. They’ve asked us to go to Victoria, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. (And we plan to! Learn more as we approach Jan 1 09.) We do little jigs everytime we get that great feedback.
Maybe 3 or 4 agents have been totally unimpressed. Well, actually, Dunham Team Family Realty (I think that’s what they’re called) is comprised of, like, 4 agents, and they’ve all asked to be removed from the site —- but we’ll count them as just one unit. 
And quite a few people have been neutral… but open to persuasion. I doubt that I’ll be the one to persuade them. That’s what the customer voice is for.
In the end, this is just a short note to express that I’m aware of the backwards approach I’ve taken to receiving feedback. I’ll try to put my passion & ego aside when listening to the voice of the customer. I hope agents will be willing to do the same.
~jw
November 23, 2008 at 1:24 am |
Joanna is a zealot for wcs. She trashes anyone who doesn’t conform to her rigid concept of the good that wcs will provide. She wants respect but does not give it. Now she has learned the value of a self edit. You may not like the ugly gift that gramma gives you but you accept it with grace and thanks and dump it later. Being brutally honest with gramma will get you disowned. Its the little nicities that make society work.
November 23, 2008 at 1:38 am |
Another happy customer.
Thanks for your comment, Keith. I’m glad that you’re using this forum to speak with me — that’s what comments are for. I certainly don’t expect that everyone is going to agree with me. That wouldn’t be any good at all.
As for whether I’ve “learned the value of a self edit”… that’s funny. My post about understanding negative reactions was not a retraction of my previous posts. Not at all. It was based on a comment another person at WCS (Dave) had made re: the heat I’ve been taking as the WCS communications lead. I was surprised he thought we’d be taking that much heat, so I gave it all some thought, and the result was the post you’ve responded to.
Also, we will be adding to WCS a section where users — like you, other agents and reviewers — can tell us what you think about us in a very public way. We’re happy to sit in the same hot seat agents do on this site. We’ve got no reason to try to keep people quiet about us.
Please continue to comment. I really value the discussion.
~jw
November 27, 2008 at 12:32 am |
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