BUSINESS Interview
THE CUSTOMER IS KING
Executive Branch Manager, Rodger Heasman
Portfolio catches up with King & Chasemore’s Regional Director, Tom Middleton
T
he day after the glitzy party celebrating the re-opening of the fabulous flagship office of King & Chasemore in Church Road, Hove, we caught up with Regional Director Tom Middleton. Tom is responsible for 17 of the 22 King & Chasemore’s offices from Newhaven to Chichester in East and West Sussex. King & Chasemore, in turn, is part of the largest estate agency network in the UK, Countrywide, which has over 1,300 sales and lettings branches and is in the top FTSE 250 group of companies. Executive Branch Manager , Rodger Heasman takes care of the day-to-day running of this branch. Tom, this is now a beautiful, contemporary space with a very welcoming reception area for customers. 42 PORTFOLIO
“Yes, we are very conscious of giving each and every customer a warm welcome, and we hope this seating area immediately puts them at ease. Our Property Consultants are able to discuss potential clients’ needs and give them a real personal service. We have undergone a complete culture change here at King & Chasemore, and the layout of this office reflects this. All 9 Brighton & Hove offices will soon undergo the same transformation in the near future” So has anything else changed within the organization over the past few months? “Well, the whole organization now has a new CEO, Alison Platt, who has come from BUPA; she comes from a very customer-focused background and has cast a fresh pair of eyes
over this business. She has undoubtedly had a lot of influence on the direction in which the company is going, specifically by focusing carefully on each and every customer and helping them through the sometimes painful process of purchasing a property. Many at Board level now have a lot of top retail experience, and their improved message of the customer being at the heart of everything we do now feeds through to the local offices here at the sharp end. We like to think of it as putting people and property together. So much so, in fact that, unlike other estate agency chains, King & Chasemore are now investing in more staff, not less, so that we can devote more time to ensuring the buying process is as easy as possible. A complaint often levelled at estate agents is that they don’t communicate effectively with their customers,