4 Steps Brokers Can Take to Get Agents to Adopt Technology

One of the greatest struggles that broker-owners have with technology is getting their agents to use the technology tools they provide. On the other hand, many agents are suffering from tech fatigue with simply too many tech tools to learn, sometimes taking too much time to learn, none of them being integrated and often requiring too many different passwords to remember to access everything.

While brokers throughout the U.S. over many years have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in technology for their agents, many studies show that fewer than half of all agents are using the tech tools their broker provides. A study by the WAV Group ("Broker Technology Adoption and Satisfaction Study") pointed to some of the reasons:

• Most brokerages today are managing relationships with five to eleven vendors
• Many of the tech tools provided have overlapping features and few, if any, ever work together
• The tech tools are scattered and not located in a single place for agents to access

The study points out that "the cumbersome nature of this lack of organization leads to poor product adoption by agents, and low degrees of satisfaction by the broker."

4 Steps to Adoption

Unfortunately, most brokerages can't wave a magic wand and fix all of these challenges overnight. So we talked to our Tech Helpline analysts for their advice on how to get agents more comfortable with technology. Tech Helpline is a service owned by the Florida Realtors® and the real estate industry's number one tech support service. Tech analysts work with real estate agents every day and have a combined IT experience of nearly 300 years.

What they suggested were four basics steps that every brokerage can take today to help agents adopt their most important technology. Think of these steps as a "workaround" – a way to increase agent adoption despite other considerable challenges that may be inherent in how a brokerage provides technology to agents today.