RE/MAX
RingCentral enables RE/MAX agents to take their offices with them wherever they go
This is a cell-phone-driven business, and this ability to customize call routing means agents get their calls and are able to engage with clients much more efficiently.
Matt van Winkle
Founder and CEO, RE/MAX
After graduating from law school, Matt van Winkle decided to pursue real estate in lieu of a traditional law career. He opened his first RE/MAX office in the greater Seattle region in 2011.
From his experience working as a real estate agent, he knew there were significant inefficiencies in the way typical real estate brokerages were run. It seemed to him that the real estate industry was five or 10 years behind other industries in terms of its use of technology to streamline business processes and build strong client relationships. In a business in which mobility, agility, and anywhere, anytime connectivity to clients and colleagues are so critical to success, van Winkle was especially taken aback at brokerages’ lack of use of cloud-based technology.
“This is a business in which agents spend most of their time out of the office on the road,” van Winkle explains. “To be effective and provide the best possible client service, they need to be able to run their businesses from their smartphones. They need the ability to make and receive phone calls, access and send documents, and manage other aspects of their businesses completely digitally.”
INDUSTRY
Real Estate
HQ
Seattle, WA
YEAR FOUNDED
2011
EMPLOYEES
260+
Success required moving to the cloud
He knew that to be successful, his brokerage firm couldn’t afford to be tethered to a premises-based, traditional phone system. Instead, he wanted his phone system and his business applications to be cloud-based in order to provide the anytime, anywhere, any-device functionality and omnichannel connectivity he and his employees needed to serve their clients. And he didn’t want to have to hire IT staff to manage and maintain an on-premises PBX system. As he researched the various alternatives to legacy PBX systems, it became obvious very quickly that RingCentral was the cloud business communications system that met all of his requirements and had the best customer reviews for features, quality of service, reliability, and the ability to integrate with business applications.
“For instance,” says van Winkle, “it was important that we have a robust and customizable call routing capability to automatically forward calls to our agents at our offices to their cell phones wherever they happened to be.”
With RingCentral, your office is wherever you are
“This is a cell-phone-driven business,” van Winkle continues, “and this ability to customize call routing means agents get their calls and are able to engage with clients much more efficiently.”
Additionally, van Winkle and many of his employees have downloaded the RingCentral mobile app to their iOS and Android mobile devices to enable them to make and take voice calls, send and receive faxes, and participate in HD video meetings and conference calls anytime, anywhere. “With the RingCentral mobile app,” van Winkle says, “your office is always wherever you are. The bottom line is that when clients can reach agents easily, those clients are much happier and our agents’ productivity reflects that.”
With the RingCentral mobile app your office is always wherever you are. The bottom line is that when clients can reach agents easily, those clients are much happier and our agents’ productivity reflects that.
Matt van Winkle
Founder and CEO, RE/MAX
RingCentral drives sales productivity while reducing operational costs
In typical real estate offices using traditional phone systems, the average agent’s productivity increases three percent year over year. Agents working at RE/MAX on the Lake and Northwest, on the other hand, average 40 to 50 percent increases in their sales productivity year over year, thanks in part to the efficiency and functionality provided by RingCentral. RE/MAX on the Lake and Northwest has also realized dramatic cost savings over traditional phone systems of more than 30 percent by implementing RingCentral.
“Real estate is absolutely a mobile business,” says van Winkle. Without the functionality, mobile support, reliability, and scalability RingCentral provides, we couldn’t be as successful as we are. The anywhere, anytime capabilities, access, and availability RingCentral provides us is literally mission critical to all of us here at RE/MAX on the Lake and Northwest. And while I didn’t know when I opened my first RE/MAX office that within just a few years I would grow my existing business and acquire an additional RE/MAX brokerage for a total of six offices with over 260 agents, I do know that RingCentral’s scalability and continuously evolving capabilities will support our business well into the future.”