Are You Driving in the Left Lane, but Only Going the Speed Limit (or less)?

by Dave Phillips

CEO, PA Association of Realtors

Author website

I travel Interstate 64 between Charlottesville and Richmond at least once a month. It is a fairly lightly traveled highway (compared to 95 and 81), so it is justifiably only two lanes wide in either direction. It is also a fairly boring drive because the scenery (which is nice) does not change for 50 miles. The road is straight, flat, and requires a stop at Starbucks before you brave the monotony.

The lack of interesting scenery or road challenges allows my mind to wander and think up Blog posts like this one. On a recent trek back from Richmond, I experienced a common source of frustration – a legitimate pet peeve of mine – when I found myself going 5 miles UNDER the speed limit while driving in the “fast lane.” As you can guess, there was an otherwise “normal” person merrily cruising down the left lane and ignoring the signs that say “Slower Traffic Keep Right.” Cars had stacked up behind this slowpoke as they attempted to negotiate passing the vehicle on the right.

There was a law on the books in Virginia that made it illegal to pass on the right, but that was removed several years ago because more than one member of the General Assembly shares my pet peeve. I would have preferred that we stiffen the penalty for driving slow in the left lane (perhaps jail time) instead of justifying cars weaving through traffic, but then again, how much sympathy can you have for drivers like me who believe a State Trooper’s mantra is “eight you’re great, nine you’re mine?”

For many agents, the same frustration occurs in the real estate business. I often hear complaints about less “professional” agents slowing up a transaction. In essence, the complaint is that one agent involved in the transaction is hurting the efficiency of information flow needed to get the deal done, much like a slow driver in the left lane hurts the efficiency of traffic flow. This analogy, however, breaks down when you compare the root cause of the problem. The driver in the left lane is simply rude or inconsiderate of other drivers, but less-than-professional agents are generally the ones not delivering top-notch customer service.

Make sure you do not confuse “unethical” and “unprofessional.” In my 18 years of fielding complaints about the behavior of REALTORS®, only a very few have been actual ethical issues. Generally, complaints result from poor service, bad communications, or bad information. In other words, bad customer service is what generally causes a REALTOR®, or the public, to complain about the “professionalism” of an agent.

There is a perception that there is a lack of quality customer service in the real estate profession, but I’m not sure how much reality is in this perception. Recent market research by the National Association of REALTORS® (sorry, I couldn’t find a link) showed that the public loved their personal agent, but did not think highly of the profession as a whole. To put it a different way, the public loves the way their agent drives, but thinks most other agents are driving too slow and in the left lane.

Since perception IS reality, it does not matter if most agents or just a few are driving slowly in the fast lane. It really only takes a few bad drivers to mess up the efficiency of the traffic, and it only takes a few agents delivering bad customer service to mess up the entire industry. If we are unwilling to cull out inconsiderate drivers or bad service providers, then we should not be surprised by the results.

When the Virginia General Assembly changed the law to allow drivers to pass on the right, they were, in effect, saying that there was nothing they can do about slow drivers in the fast lane. The REALTOR® organization, to its credit, has not given up on the industry’s customer service problem (real or perceived). There have been a few attempts to change both the perception and the reality of the industry. The perception of REALTORS®, thanks to millions of dollars of ads, has improved, but is still low compared to other professions (2000 Gallup Survey, 2005 Gallup Survey). There have also been a lot of efforts to raise the education requirements for real estate licensees in many states. Unfortunately, very few of these education requirements include anything to do with customer service. There is no evidence (at least that I’m aware of) that any of these increased requirements has decreased the number of slow drivers in the fast lane. Perhaps we have created smarter drivers, but we have not caused them to change lanes.

So if more education and millions of dollars in ads is not the answer, what will cause under-performing REALTORS® to either drive faster or move over and let others pass? We don’t know for sure that this is the answer, but my local association in Charlottesville (CAAR) is getting ready to take a bold step and go where no other association has gone before. Recently, the CAAR Board of Directors approved a first-of-its-kind partnership with QSC to improve customer service among local agents. The partnership includes opportunities for customer service training and an on-line consumer rating system (coming this fall) that will tie in directly to the local MLS.

CAAR believes that improving customer service across the board is good for both the public and REALTORS®. The results that QSC has achieved with select agents around the country are impressive and we believe that expanding this system to all agents in our local area will raise the bar for both agent performance and consumer expectations. We’ll have to wait and see if this program moves low performers out of the fast lane, but at least we will raise the speed limit and see who can keep up.