Commercial Real Estate Property Listing Management

247Digitize was recently presented with a dilemma requiring swift assembly of trained resources to address an urgent need. An eminent US based Commercial Real Estate property clearinghouse approached us with an expedited request to assist them with the maintenance of thousands of property listings on their online marketplace. Their current provider was not performing at a satisfactory level causing severe customer blowback threatening future business as well as a drain on internal resources tasked with putting out fire. In addition, the post-COVID boom in commercial real estate activity (a record $809 million in sales in 2021 alone) was causing increasing quality and deadline compliance issues leaving them at a crossroads. The difficult decision was made to bring in a new partner on the fly to address these pain points immediately before current and prospective revenue was significantly impacted.

About our client: Founded in 2015 and based in Los Angeles our client is a pioneer in the commercial real estate market. Their cutting-edge property listing portal boasts over 2 million visitors per month. With upwards of 400,000 properties listed at any given time, they are a premier partner in linking brokers and agents with potential buyers to facilitate quick sales. They provide a comprehensive online forum where buyers, tenants and brokers/agents can empower information about real estate properties quickly and effectively through exhaustive search options.

By the Numbers:

• Over 136,000 property listings closed over the first 8 months of engagement.
• 70+ full time case agents trained and deployed over a phased implementation period.
• Demonstrated >99% accuracy of 50-60 data fields entered or verified for each and every property listing.
• True 24/7/365 coverage provided to maintain 24 – 72 hour ticket completion compliance per the Service Level Agreement.

Challenge:  The challenge was to quickly build a team capable of accurately processing 300 listings a day on an expedited basis with the capability to scale up to 1,000 listings on a compressed timeline. The closing of tickets and listings is governed by our Client’s strict corporate wide compliance guarantee of 24 to 72 hours. To meet this timeline 247Digitize embarked on a crash course of intensive knowledge transfer from our Client to our senior team, and from there to the case agents being assembled. The team had to develop a deep understanding of the current concepts, SOPs and navigation of the existing tools to develop enough proficiency to meet the daily throughput. Beyond traditional email, case agents were also tasked with juggling requests on the fly through a variety of communication channels including SalesForce, Slack, and ZenDesk.

Solution:  A thorough understanding of underlying problems is the cornerstone of a comprehensive solution. The Client’s current solution was not working and the chief issues plaguing their operation via the current provider were attention to detail and responsiveness when issues arose. Our solution was to deploy our most senior resources to act as the sherpas of the project guiding all aspects of the internal training process while a steady bench of case agents was being assembled in the background. Workflow details were gathered from the client and refined for internal consumption along with multiple Zoom walkthrough sessions to cover critical aspects of posting to the portal and compliance concepts.

Within a couple of weeks, 20 dedicated resources were working 12 hour shifts to clear backlog, attend ongoing training calls during core business hours in the US and conduct internal training sessions as well. A carefully coordinated roll-out plan was crafted ensuring that all exceptions outside of the provided workflow were brought immediately to the client for feedback allowing continuous refinement of the process. Updates to the SOPs were exhaustively catalogued and communicated via timely revisions to the project manual specifically developed to handle this effort. Despite the details of the properties being submitted from disparate sources of varying length and file formats, 247Digitize associates picked up the concepts swiftly to ensure SLA compliance. From usage and classification details to features and square footage, 50-60 property attributes were entered and/or verified at an accuracy rate well above 99% measured at the field level.

Results:  Within a month, the daily throughput of cases and listings processed had increased over 40%. Today, our associates are managing over 1,000 listings daily, maintaining all SLAs and staying in lockstep with 5% month to month growth forecast into the future. As familiarity and confidence grew between us, the 247Digitize team partnered with the Client to introduce enhancements to the workflow and features to the backend interface to streamline the process delivering better results. With the revamped design and the increased efficiency that came with it, both the Client and 247Digitize were able to make more timely decisions critical to managing accuracy and deadline compliance.

Testimonial: “I really appreciate how far you all have come; it is truly impressive to see how we were able to quickly adapt to these new workflows combined with the amount of volume you all receive on a daily basis. It means a lot to us and hoping we can continue to keep growing together throughout this year!”