Automation Enhances Customer Experience in Real Estate: A Case Study on Orchard

Orchard is a real estate company that aims to take the stress out of selling and buying homes by providing a smooth customer experience. They focus on creating personalized customer profiles that are up-to-date across multiple platforms. As a startup in a highly competitive sector, Orchard wanted to grow rapidly while focusing on low-cost acquisition channels like a referral program. They were looking for efficient processes that would save time and help their company in the long run. They were also keen on ensuring that their customers received tailored content based on their stage in the buying or selling process.

Orchard, a real estate company, was facing challenges in managing their lead lifecycle and customer profiles. They were struggling to keep customer information updated across multiple platforms, which was crucial for providing a personalized customer experience. The company was spending hours each week to ensure that the customer data was updated across their platforms. They were also finding it difficult to target new customers with personalized emails due to the time-consuming process of compiling data and manually sending email campaigns. Another challenge was the manual process of notifying the sales team about new leads, which was repetitive and time-consuming. This was hindering Orchard's focus on providing tailored content to their customers based on their stage in the buying or selling process.

Orchard turned to automation to streamline their lead management process and improve customer experience. They used Zapier to automatically collect new leads, send cultivation emails, and hand over new leads to the sales team. When a lead submitted a referral form on a Webflow landing page, a new user was automatically created in Iterable. Based on the form submission details, a custom event was added to the user in Iterable that included relevant metadata to personalize the referral email experience. The referral offer and the friend's name that referred them were added to the customer profile. If a referral offer or friend's name was added in Iterable, it also got added to a corresponding Google Sheet for tracking. If the lead was new, an email with the lead's information was sent to the Sales team so they could proactively reach out. This automation allowed Orchard to add data to their newly referred lead profile pages within their CRM, trigger appropriate communications, track the overall volume of their referral program, and improve conversion by engaging with their Sales department in an automated fashion.

• The automation has significantly reduced the time spent on data entry, allowing Orchard to spend more time with their customers. It has also enriched their customer data, enabling them to provide a customized, intentional customer experience. Orchard has also used Zapier to manage processes such as circulating survey feedback to relevant teams across the organization, which has helped them scale while keeping the customer top of mind. Now, employees across the company can access customer data instantly, ensuring Orchard can provide a personalized customer experience at a moment's notice. The automation has also improved the company's ability to troubleshoot customer experiences in real time and make immediate improvements to the customer experience.

• The automation saves the Orchard team two to three hours a week.

• Orchard has grown to almost 600 employees, indicating successful scaling of the business.

• The automation allows Orchard to track the overall volume of their referral program easily.