2 relia research by Andrew Clegg

Student Numbers: 1402108, 1401523 and 1406523

Customer Satisfaction In Estate Agents (Jackie Quinn)? Looking at the correlation table everything has a positive correlation but some are higher and stand out more.

Introduction

Staff Engagement expected level

With the research one clear aim was to understand if there was a clear difference between the expectations and the satisfaction that customers received of customer service at estate agents. The estate agent used was Jackie Quinn's Estate Agent to find out what her customers thought of her business in regards to customer service.

When a customer receives great customer service from all aspects of Jackie Quinn's Estate Agent they will then be inclined to use them again when purchasing or selling a house.

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With this "When it comes to customer service, honesty isn't the best policy, it is the only policy"(Bush,J. 2007).

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31 Male & 27 Female

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Wide Variety of age from under 25 to 65+.

Email responses, Phone interaction & Attention to detail: All link to communication and staff engagement ranging from .901— .991.

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The .991 shows that there is almost a perfect correlation between Email responses and attention to detail. As shown in the graph below.

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"Developing empathy and rapport more easily”(Hasson.G, 2012)

Count

25 20 15 10 5

Age Bracket Under 25 26-37 38-48 49-64 65+ Total

31 27

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0 1

Gender Male Female

Responsiveness: Has a very high positive correlation with every aspect from the table ranging from .910—.950.

Survey Stats / Simple Descriptive 58 Reply's to survey.

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Staff Engagement satisfaction level

To be able to understand the different levels of expectations to satisfaction.

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Level of Expectation 1 being Very Poor and 5 being Very Good

The main aim of this research project was to try and understand the difference in expectations and the satisfaction received in customer service areas within estate agents. This will be looked at through the comparison of gender, age, sole agent, and if they used social media.

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Trust: Again links with how well the company communicate to the customer but also how well they can negotiate a sale of the customers house. Again correlation is very highly positive ranging from .907—.930.

With this literature has provided a direct path to follow and to use to enhance any comparisons. When thinking about the questionnaire the focus was looking at expectations to perceptions, but the client used said “That if you expect something to be good or bad then you will see it as that in regards to perception." Because of this the main focus changed from perceptions to satisfaction, as customers may expect the service to be excellent which it may be, but may only get little satisfaction from certain areas. 

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Before the questionnaire was designed the focus was on reading literature surrounding the housing market, as there was not much to find regarding. The customer service area was looked at in regards to what people, wanted from the service they are provided. When looking at the research what customers wanted in regards of service was that they "received high quality service and they are more likely to remain loyal to that supplier"(Hundson, S. Hundson, L. 2013). 

Staff engagement: Seems to link with how well the company can communicate to the customer. Correlation is very highly positive ranging from .901—.929.

t n u20 o C

The UK trust level for estate agents is currently at %22 (Ipos MORI. 2015). But with this you can see how much people trust Jackie through their satisfaction.

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The "UK housing stock rises to £5.75 trillion" (Cook, l. 2015). With this you can see that it is vital that customers trust and get what they expected from estate agents.

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BML224: Data Analysis For Research

Frequency 2 6 11 27 12 58

Level of satisfaction

Level of Satisfaction1 being Very Poor and 5 being Very good

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Gender

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Staff engagement

When split down to see if they used Jackie Quinn Estate Agents to let or sell their property there is a clear difference between what people expect, and what they received in regards to letting or selling their property’s. “Staff refers to prompt service, attention to clientele, and customer individualized service caring.”(Domenge.R, Arciniega.L, 2015, )

Trust

This has been shown in the graphs below:

Responsiven ess

Staff Engagement expectation level of people who let their property

Email responses

Female 47%

Phone interaction

Male 53%

Count

Attention to detail

4 3 2

Negotiation

1 0 1

Responsiveness

Email responses

Phone interaction

Attention to detail

Negotiation

.918

.872

.949

.874

.880

Box Plots 

From the box-plots there is a very significant difference in the level of expectations and the level of satisfaction for suggestions of easy sale.

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With this you can see that the box plots for expectation with customers that only used Jackie Quinn and those that used more than one Estate Agent are both very similar.

.000 1.000

.000 .853

.000 .746

.000 .851

.000 .803

.000 .841

.000 .918

.853

.000 1.000

.000 .848

.000 .878

.000 .849

.000 .884

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.000 .872

.000 .746

.848

.000 1.000

.000 .887

.000 .891

.000 .813

The noticeable difference with the customers that used more than one estate agent is that their answers ranged from 5-1. Instead of being from 5-3 for customer’s that only used Jackie Quinn.

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.000 .949

.000 .851

.000 .878

.887

.000 1.000

.000 .903

.000 .832

There is an anomaly on the customers that only used Jackie Quinn which could have been someone who hasn't had a good experience with Estate Agents before. With the box-plots for Satisfaction it is clearly shown that there is a significant difference in the overall answer of people that used only Jackie Quinn to those that used more than one estate agent.

.000 .874

.000 .803

.000 .849

.000 .891

.903

.000 1.000

.000 .778

.000 .880

.000 .841

.000 .884

.000 .813

.000 .832

.778

.000 1.000

.000

.864

From the correlation table above everything has a positive correlation but only a couple stand out from the rest.

Level of Expectation 1 being Very Poor and 5 being Very good

Age

Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed)

Staff Trust engage ment 1.000 .864

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Mann-Whitney test Hypothesis 

The Null Hypothesis: There is no significant difference in the level of expectation of suggestions for easy sale depending on if Jackie Quinn was your only Estate Agent or not.

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The Alternative Hypothesis: There is a significant difference in the level of expectation of suggestions for easy sale depending on if Jackie Quinn was your only Estate Agent or not.

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The Null Hypothesis: There is no significant difference in the level of satisfaction of suggestions for easy sale depending on if Jackie Quinn was your only Estate Agent or not.

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The Alternative Hypothesis: There is a significant difference in the level of satisfaction of suggestions for easy sale with people who used more than just Jackie Quinn being less satisfied then the customers that only used Jackie Quinn.

Staff Engagement expectation level of people who sold their property

30 25

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Phone interaction: Also links to attention to detail with a correlation of .905

The majority of the aspects of satisfaction is around .750—.949 so every aspect has a strong correlation.

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t n u15 o C

Staff engagement: Links to the responsiveness and phone interaction as between .918—.949.

The level of satisfaction is overall a lot lower than the expected from each aspect.

yc n e u15 q er F

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This is shown in that the people who used more than one estate agent answered primarily 2(Poor) for satisfaction, were as people who only used Jackie Quinn answered primarily 5(Very Good).

As the satisfaction has not meat the expected values for correlation the answers are a little more varied in comparison

10 5

5 0

0 under 25

26-37

38-48

49-64

65+

Age Gaps

Level of Expectation 1 being Very Poor and 5 being Very good

General Trust Levels 

“with 22% trusting journalists and estate agents” (Ipos MORI. 2015) in the general public.

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This was not shown in the research regarding Jackie Quinn.

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The frequency tables below show clearly that 70.7% of people expected a good level of trust.

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There was 69% of people that were satisfied with the trust in regards to Jackie Quinn after using her estate agent.

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This clearly shows that more than 22% of people using Jackie Quinn trust estate agents out of our sample of 58 people. Trust - Level of expectation 1-Very Poor 2 3 4 5 - Very Good Missing

Frequency 3 3 5 9 32 6

Percent 5.2 5.2 8.6 15.5 55.2 10.3

Trust - Level of satisfaction 1 - Very Poor

Frequency 6

Percent 10.3

2 3 4 5 - Very Good Missing

3 3 7 33 6

5.2 5.2 12.1 56.9 10.3

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When looking at the two graphs above the level of people who let their house through Jackie Quinn showed a higher percentage of people who were expecting very poor staff engagement, this could be because they may have expected them to just find a client for the house.

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When looking at the people who were selling their house the majority answered 5(Very Good). This is because when selling a house you expect the staff to be engaging towards you, due to the fact that you could be a giving them a lot of money at a 1% commission rate for each sale.

Staff Engagement satisfaction level of people who let their property 10 9 8 7 t 6 n u 5 o C 4 3 2 1 0

In-Depth Analysis of Trust Now that you can see that the trust for Jackie Quinn’s Estate Agent is very high. An in-depth analysis will be exploring the level of trust in regards to who used the social media pages and their age.

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With regards to expectations of trust 62.5% of social media users expected a high level.

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With the over 65’s having the higher expectation of trust with 2 putting 5 (Very Good).

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On the other hand the people that didn't use social media, with a staggering 81.82% expecting a high level of trust.

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With the age bracket of 49-64 being the dominate age with a high expectation as 23 out of the 36 put 4-5 (Good—Very Good).

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After using Jackie Quinn the trust satisfaction increased from the expected 62.5% to become 71.43% which can give us an insight into people who see Jackie Quinn as a trust worthy estate agent. With the dominate age bracket for social media still being 65+.

Mann-Whitney Test Results

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Below: Worst correlation for satisfaction being .746 but still highly positive.

Did you use Jackie Quinn Estate Agent's social media when looking for a property? Yes

Under 25

26 - 37

38 - 48

t n u15 o C

49 - 64

65+

1 - Very Poor 2 3 4 5 - Very Good Trust - Level of satisfaction

1 - Very Poor 2 3 4 5 - Very Good 1 - Very Poor 2 3 4 5 - Very Good

0 0 1 0 1 Under 25

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

1 0 0 0 1 26 - 37

0 0 0 2 1 2 0 0 0 1

1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 5 38 - 48

0 1 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 5

0 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 6 17 49 - 64

0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 5 16

0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 1 4

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From the two graphs above you can see again that a high percentage answered 1(Very Poor) in regards to letting which means the staff had little engagement with the customer.

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From the expected graph it has gone from 3 to 4 answering 1(Very Poor).

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This shows us that Jackie Quinn Estate Agent’s need to be more engaging with the customers who let their property's.

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But again as expected the satisfaction of staff engagement in selling property’s is very high like in the expected graph.

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With this it is believed to be because Jackie Quinn will make more money from these customers. Level of Expectation

Staff enTrust gagement

Responsiveness

Email responses

Phone interaction

Attention to detail

Staff en- Correlation gagement coefficient

1.000

.855

.929

.909

.928

.901

.869

.855

.000 1.000

.000 .910

.000 .914

.000 .930

.000 .884

.000 .907

.910

.000 1.000

.000 .931

.000 .950

.000 .937

.000 .916

Expectations and Satisfactions of Suggestions for easy sale against sole agent or not? 

From the descriptive statistics it is very easy to see that there is a difference in the results. To check this the mean, median, and skewness of each aspect has been used to try and find a direction that the results are moving in.

This is shown below: Did Jackie Quinn Estate Agent act for you as your sole agent? Yes

Negotiation

65+

0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 7

Customers expectations and satisfaction on Staff Engagement? 

Next time

1 0 0 0 1

But with level of satisfaction because p=0.007<0.05 then the results are significant and therefore you will reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis. So therefore because we accepted the alternative you can see that their was a significant difference in regards to if the customer used more than one estate agent or only Jackie Quinn which determined how satisfied they were with the suggestion for an easy sale. With a result of 39.5.

But from the results received out of the 58 people asked the majority of them were happy with every aspect of the estate agent, which is good because this means that Jackie Quinn Estate agents will be able to have great rapport with their customers and this will make them willing to use the company again when they need to sell or rent a property.

0 0 0 0 0

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This study on customer satisfaction in estate agents (Jackie Quinn) showed that from the majority of the questions asked people about their level of satisfaction matched what they expected or even exceeded it. Research also showed that more than 22% (Ipos MORI. 2015) of people asked trusted what the estate agents said. This means that with Jackie Quinn Estate Agents they deliver great customer satisfaction in all aspects of the business expect for suggestions for easy sale. This is because from the expected to the satisfaction level it rose and this indicated there could be room for improvement.

Level of Satisfaction1 being Very Poor and 5 being Very good

1 - Very Poor 2 3 4 5 - Very Good

In regards to the level of expectation because p=0.200>0.05 then it is not significant so you will accept the null hypothesis. With a result of 71.

Conclusion

Staff engagement satisfaction level of people who sold their property

"When it comes to customer service, honestly isn't the best policy, it is the only policy"(Bush.J, 2007) Trust - Level of expectation

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Level of Satisfaction1 being Very Poor and 5 being Very good

In regards to the non social media users their level of trust after using Jackie Quinn fell to 79.55% which is still extremely high. With the dominate age bracket for non social media users still being 49-64.

Did you use Jackie Quinn Estate Agent's social media when looking for a property? Yes

A Mann Whitney test was conducted to see if their was a significant difference between customers using more than one estate agent in regards to their level of expectation and satisfaction for suggestions for easy sale. A null hypothesis of no significant difference and an alternative hypothesis of a significant difference were made. Also a 95% confidence level was assumed.

Above: Best correlation for satisfaction being .949.

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From the graphs in the next column there is evidence, that there is not much change from the expected level and satisfaction level from staff engagement. With this evidence a decision was made to split the data even further to see what the level of staff engagement was like in regards to the use of the estate agent when letting or selling.

"In a highly competitive environment, customers increasingly expect service providers to anticipate their needs and deliver on them"(Hyndson.S, Hudson.L 2013)

Trust

Responsiveness Email responses Phone interaction Attention to detail Negotiation

Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed) Correlation coefficient Sig (2-tailed)

.000 .929 .000 .909

.000 .914

.931

.000 .928

.000 .930

.000 .901 .000 .869 .000

.000 1.000

.000 .969

.000 .881

.000 .844

.000 .950

.969

.000 1.000

.000 .902

.000 .870

.000 .884

.000 .937

.000 .991

.902

.000 1.000

.000 .937

.000 .907

.000 .916

.000 .844

.000 .870

.937

.000 1.000

.000

Suggestions for easy sale

Level of expectation

Level of satisfaction

Level of expectation

Level of satisfaction

Descriptive

Stats

One thing that could be done differently is include a question in regards to how often the customer used Jackie Quinn's Estate Agents, in regards to communication per visit to see if you meet their expectations. “Let’s say a customer expects you to call within two hours, and you call the next day.” (Gerson.R, 1998)This is because it may be a good way to compare how much satisfaction may be affected depending on how many times they have spoke to or visited Jackie Quinn's Estate Agent. So this would have been very beneficial as it would have be another area at which could be compared. As well as this if using the same Client again there would be a need to communicate with the client or any client, this is because when releasing the questionnaire the client used did not like some of the questions. “promote company-customer communication so that company decisions will foster the relationship rather than inadvertently damaging it.” (Emerald, 2005) This was due to the wording in regards to coming across as a little intimidating. With this the client made changes to some of our questions to sound different, but also changed question 19 from expectations and perceptions to expectations and satisfaction. This was because the client wanted to know how satisfying their customer service is compared to what the customer expected to receive.

Mean

4.31

Median

5.00

Skewness

-.972

Mean

4.13

Median

5.00

Skewness

-1.001

Mean

3.60

Median

4.00

Bear.M, 2015, Survival of the fittest using social media, Oracle Corporation, USA

Skewness

-1.089

Bush.J, 2007, Delivering Knock your socks off service, 4th edition, New York, AMEACOM.

Mean

2.60

Median

2.00

Skewness

.567

Mean & Median 

When completing this survey again it is important to still use the same question of customer service in estate agents. Instead of using a client because it was very stressful in regards to understanding what they wanted. It would be easier to do one based around students as they are easy to reach. Also you could see how students felt about the customer service they received when looking for a student house for 2nd/3rd/4th year of study. This may also be more relevant for people with in the University because they could potentially see which estate agents in the area deliver better customer service.

From the data you can read in the graph above it is clear to see that from what the customers expected from suggestions for easy sale they were not satisfied with what they received.

Skewness 

In regards to the customers that only used Jackie Quinn the skewness for their satisfaction was –1.001 which means that they were to the right of the normal distribution curve.

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With the customers who used at least one more estate agent as well as Jackie Quinn the skewness of their satisfaction was .567 so this means that it is to the left of the normal distribution curve.

References

Calabrese.A, Spadoni.A, 2013, Quality versus productivity in service production systems: an organisational analysis, Taylor & Francis, Rome. Clout.H, Blacksell.M, King.R, Pinder.D, 1990, Western Europe, New York, Longman Inc Cook.L, 2015, UK housing stock rises to £5.75 trillion Domenge.R, Arciniega.L, 2015, Development of a short questionnaire for measuring service quality perceptions, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Mexico Emerald, 2005, corporate and Customer Communications, Emerald Group Publishing Ltd, Hasson.G, 2012, Brilliant communication Skills, Harlow, Pearson education Limited. Hundson.S, Hudson.L, 2013, Customer service for Hospitality and Tourism, Oxford, Goodfellow Publishers Limited. Gerson.R,1998, Beyond Customer Service: Keeping Customer for Life, Course Technology. Ipos MORI, 2015, Politicians trusted less than estate agents, bankers and journalists, Ipsos MORI. Saber.J, 2013, What have you done for me lately? Changing perceptions of residential real estate agents, Ryerson University, Toronto Torrance.J, 2015, Time to show estate agents the door, Management Today