REALTY firm Keller Williams Jamaica has invested close to $20 million in future-proofing its business with a number of big technology moves, while relocating its office to facilitate these investments.

The investment also covers the upgrade of all its physical locations islandwide in addition to its new flagship location in the Barbican Centre complex in St Andrew.

In addition to tripling the physical footprint of its Jamaica headquarters to over 1,500 square feet to enable physical distancing and better facilities for in-person and virtual customer experiences, Keller Williams Jamaica has launched an in-house virtual customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

“We have seen the demand for more digital and virtual options in both sales and customer experience,” a company release quotes CEO Rory Marsh. “While some clients still want to do traditional property viewings, both proprietors and other buyers and renters nowadays are showing a preference for 3D virtual tours. This is increasingly so now where we see that persons are being extra cautious because of the ongoing [novel coronavirus] pandemic.”

According to Marsh the tool also widens the scope of the firm’s marketplace, allowing clients to interact with the company from anywhere in the world, especially given the travel restrictions worldwide.

He said the KW Command technology is also expected to give a big boost to the company’s customer experience, as its team of over 170 agents islandwide have access to customer and business information from anywhere they are located.

“While the virtual doll house tour is one of the highlights of this tool, and a first of its kind for the Jamaican market, the access to information for our agents equips them to better serve customers around the clock and at their mutual convenience,” Marsh explained.

“With many operators in the local real estate market expected to make the shift to digital, we want to ensure that customer experience continues to be one of our key differentiators now and going forward,” he added.

KW Command is a cloud-based technology that enables customers to access 3D virtual tours, digital floor plans and virtual engagements with their real estate agents. Agents are able to use the tool to edit client records and calendar appointments across multiple devices, with real time updating and integration using other popular technology tools like Salesforce and Microsoft Office Suite.

Asked whether he expects the already booming real estate market to continue performing at the same pace in the next 12 months to two years, Marsh said: “We are very confident about the outlook for real estate in Jamaica; the demand and appetite for real estate will continue to grow.”

Jamaica, he said, is ripe for development and there is still an undersupply of properties across the island.

“Local investors and customers across the Diaspora realise that even though we’re in a pandemic investing in real estate now will set them up well for the future. And that is why we’re making these critical changes in technology, training and expansion for our own business so that we’re in a good place to satisfy this demand,” added Marsh.