Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2018 | Page 52

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the building information model of the expan-
sion of Helsinki-Vantaa International Air-
port – in effect, allowing the player to drive
a car around the airstrips or roam the corri-
dors of the terminal. Encompassing 100,000
square metres, the game app is the largest of
its kind in Finland.
“We have found that the game is help-
ful in increasing user participation, since it
really gives you a good idea about what the
eventual end product will be,” Lehtovirta
said.
Instant Karma
Another example is rental solution Lumo,
which is attempting to hijack the way apart-
ments are rented in Finland. Put together by
the company Kojamo, Lumo is a website
where the customer can close the deal for a
suitable rental apartment in 15 minutes, if
he/she so wishes. After making the selection,
the person has three days to withdraw from
the transaction – or move in the next day.
“We have brought disruption to the
apartment rental business which has lost
sight of who the real customer is,” said Jani
Nieminen, CEO of Kojamo, also appearing
at the convention.
52 Nordicum
Launched in October 2015, the Lumo
site now features thousands of rentals and
is being used by people of all ages. Accord-
ing to Nieminen, decision-making online is
made possible, since there are sufficient
photos and information available on each
rental.
“In the future, I expect that people
can access these apartments via the use of
virtual reality or augmented reality tools,”
said Nieminen, adding that the future is very
much digital, in any case. “Home is already
a service platform, of sorts.”
Put People First!
It is noteworthy that many startups of today
are hell-bent on putting the customer back
in the driver’s seat; also in real estate sec-
tor, customer experience (CX) seems to be
the new-and-improved Holy Grail.
Giving a presentation at Tampere,
Jaakko Männistö, CEO of Feedbackly,
argued that meeting the customer’s expec-
tations is hard since those expectations
keep rising. However, he said that “going
the extra mile” is still the best way to woo
the customers.
“When your business is rooted on
­ eople, you’re on solid ground,” Männistö
p
said.
Talk Ain’t Cheap
The flipside of things is that when people
receive negative service they do talk about
it – and talk, and talk, and talk about it.
According to research, about 90% of con-
sumers will tell about bad experiences – and
thanks to social media, it’s not just the mail-
man, either.
“We have found that only a quarter of
Finnish companies are really customer-ori-
ented, even if all of them claim that they
are.”
For real estate industry, Männistö pro-
vides this tip: you should draw up a model
of the projected lifecycles of your customer
accounts and learn to anticipate and man-
age change.
“The more you do it, the better
equipped you will be to deal with even the
unexpected.” l
Sami J. Anteroinen