Grocery shopping, depositing a check, and buying a car have a lot more in common than they used to. Each of these actions (and nearly everything else we do) can be accomplished using software, often with only a smartphone in hand. For users, this means a simpler, more accessible, and seamless way to get things done. For companies, it means making the shift to be digital-first, or risk getting replaced by a shiny startup or technology company that promises easier, faster, and more user-friendly solutions.
What this really means, though, is that every company is a software company. And RE/MAX, one of the world’s leaders in the real estate industry, is no exception.
Real estate companies are software companies, too
Over the last decade, the real estate industry has seen a huge increase in the number of software offerings for both consumers and agents. RE/MAX has been able to stay on the leading edge, most recently with the launch of one of its largest software projects: a new agent customer relationship management (CRM) platform called booj, and the new booj-powered remax.com.
As any great PM knows, simply launching a product doesn’t guarantee success down the line. Success ultimately comes down to adoption–are users adopting the product the way you intended, and finding value in the right places?
In order to provide as much value as possible to their agents, the RE/MAX team turned to Pendo to optimize onboarding, training, and the overall user experience for booj. Here are four key tactics they leveraged:
1. Automating onboarding and training
One of RE/MAX’s main goals for using Pendo was to automate onboarding and training for their agents in the booj platform. Since this was a brand new tool, effective onboarding was key in ensuring agents felt comfortable moving thousands of leads and contacts to a new system and empowered to do their jobs effectively.
The team A/B tested different in-app onboarding experiences to determine which sequence of guides was the most impactful, using data from Pendo to measure the success of a sequence in driving its desired outcome. And this testing paid off: Onboarding using Pendo helped them reach agents in 325 cities in the first 90 days, and those users spent, in aggregate, 150 days using the platform. Talk about successful adoption.
RE/MAX’s product team also created a Resource Center that offered on-demand help to agents and the freedom to educate themselves about booj when they needed it–and when they had the time.
2. Leveraging product usage data to understand adoption
For previous trainings that happened in person, RE/MAX had no way to measure the success of these sessions. Now, bringing onboarding and training in-app means they have a detailed view of usage and adoption by location, brokerage, and even at the individual agent level. This means the team can go beyond understanding the number of users who log into the new product, and look at how much time agents are spending in the system, which features they’re accessing the most, and how they’re adopting the tool overall.
3. Collecting feedback to fuel iteration
Instead of simply rolling out the booj platform and hoping it stuck, RE/MAX made a conscious effort to build with their agents in mind at every stage. In fact, one early piece of feedback–to move the menu from the top of the product to the left side–impacted how the platform was built and is used today.
After hearing from agents that they prefer to watch and listen to instructions instead of reading them, RE/MAX started adding videos to their Pendo guides. Additionally, product data (e.g. who’s logged in and when, how often they’re clicking on things, etc.) helped the training team determine where to invest in additional in-app education and support.
4. Communicating important updates in-app
In the past, it was difficult for the RE/MAX team to communicate with their members about changes to their technology in a timely manner. With Pendo, they’re able to bring these communications inside the platform itself, making information about any changes available as soon as they happen. RE/MAX also utilizes in-app guides for other important announcements, like bug fixes, product updates, and new feature launches.
Today, it’s difficult to find a business that doesn’t need to think about its digital presence. To dig deeper into why every company is a software company, check out this video.
