I just read a post, Take A Client For Granted about an agent who was busy with other business and couldn't get to show a valued customer a particular house. The agent attempted to call and left a message telling the client that he would not be available until the next morning to show the house to him.
The next morning he called the client to show the house and the client informed him that he had gone ahead and set up a showing with another Realtor. The apparent point of the post was that he, the agent, had screwed up and was taking the client for granted because he had not been able to show this property that day.
To This I say, "Hooey!" I don't mean to be critical of the agent who wrote this post, but I think that this attitude that we have to be super people and available to our client's morning, noon and night is one of the biggest problems with our industry. I also think that it's one of the biggest mistakes that an agent can make, to buy into this mind set.
I'm not saying that you can take your current customers for granted. You do have to make sure that their needs are met and due to the nature of our business, this sometimes means dropping what you are doing in order to go show a property or present a contract, etc.. What I am saying is that an agent has to have enough respect for themselves to be able to set a basic set of ground rules from which your client and you operate from.
I've written on AR before about the agent who had a bill-board that showed her bouncing a baby on her knee with a caption that said, "I'll even watch your kids for you! Superior Customer Service!" or something to that effect. This bill board and to a lessor extent the way that the agent who wrote that post reacted to his customer's disloyalty are both contributing to the public's unreasonable expectation of what their agent should be willing to do for them.
I for one am fed up and I'm not going to take it any more! I can't do anything about the fact that there are far too many agents than the market needs and due to this fact that agents feel the necessity to offer this kind of service in order to differentiate themselves from the pack. I can however work with my clients to establish a reasonable and maintainable level of customer service that they can expect from me. That means that I will make myself available to them upon reasonable notice. If something comes up that requires my immediate attention, I will do the very best that I can in order to accommodate them. I will make arrangements to have back up in the event that I'm not going to be available on a particular day. What it doesn't mean is that I'm going to hop out of the shower to take their call at 7:00 in the morning or leave my child's high school graduation (both requests that customer's have made of me) in some off the wall effort to differentiate myself from the pack.
Oh and call me lazy or whatever, but I'm also not going to baby sit your kids for you! 
R.B. "Bob" Mitchell
ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc.
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