The ESTAS shortlist has been announced for 2013 – the result of 23,000 sellers, buyers and landlords rating their agents during the course of 2012.
Simon Brown, MD of the ESTAS, said: “The ESTAS celebrate ten years this year and each year they become valuable and more prestigious to the agency community.
“Agents are rated by the people who use their services on the level of customer service they provide and therefore provide huge marketing potential for shortlisted and winning agents.
“The shortlist is based purely on the statistics provided by customers when they complete the service questionnaire. Because of this we have to complete a very comprehensive vote audit, which this year took nearly three months to complete.”
The result is a shortlist for both sales and lettings broken down by 18 regions around the UK. Agency groups are also shortlisted in small, medium and large categories.
On April 19, the gold, silver and bronze winners in each region along with the national Grand Prix winners, will be announced at the 10th annual ESTAS ceremony.
The awards will be held again at the Hilton on Park Lane and hosted by Phil Spencer who will also be celebrating ten years of presenting the awards.
“It’s going to be a very special celebration for all of us,” says Brown. “Lots of our agents have been with us since year one and there’s a genuine collective feeling of really trying to push service standards higher across the industry. It’ll be an inspirational day for everyone who’s there.”
All agents and suppliers are invited to attend the awards.
The ESTAS are sponsored by Zoopla and supported by LCA Recruitment, HomeLet, Expert Agent, ETSOS, Moneypenny, Hallmark, Mortgage Advice Bureau, GCB Recruitment, Let Alliance and No Letting Go.
The full shortlist can be viewed here http://www.theestas.com/shortlists/
Tickets are on sale now at http://www.theestas.com/table-booking/
Agents can sign up now for the 2014 competition at http://2014.theestas.com/
Comments
@ ESTAS winner
You are certainly saying the right things here. Which I completely agree with you on.
I am interested to know if you would be kind enough to let me know if you picked up any of the Allagents awards last year?
One very interesting point that no one has appears to have picked up, out of Analizing the award winners of all 3 major award schemes (ESTAS, Times agency awards & Allagents awards), there is a clear pattern of similar winners in all except The ESTAS.
There is definately a strong argument that the ESTAS are misleading the public.
Just like what's happening in the food industry. Agents should not be allowed to be stating they are the best rated agents in their area when they are clearly not.
Perhaps Roz could publish a comparison report on all the various award winners last year . That would certainly make interesting reading
@michael saville
You're moaning about something entirely within your control to put right. You can enter the ESTAs and be judged anonymously by your clients. That will put you on a level playing field with your competitors and if you genuinely are bigger and better than them, you will win, they will lose. The entry cost is minimal and a darn sight cheaper than paying a research company to undertake a customer satisfaction survey for you. Its only by getting anonymous feedback from a large percentage of your client base that you will truly know whether or not you are doing a good job. We take our business seriously and we really do want to know if our clients value us or not. That's why we entered the estas 5 years ago and it was only last year that we won an individual award. It took us that long by taking on board the clients feedback each year to effect the necessary improvements to our systems etc. And we got a load of good PR from it; I fail to see what's wrong with standing out from the crowd for the right reasons.
@wimbledon winners. I don't disagree with you but you have to use the tools available to you and allagents is the last implement I would resort to. There is a crying need for a decent letting agent review portal but allagents isn't it. They are sullied by the comments on there from unchecked, unverified contributors. Had they set themselves up properly in the first instance by properly policing the contributions it might have been different. Instead, they look and feel like someone who set up a trolling website who are now trying to make a living from it. As another poster said a few days ago, the c.39,000 comments they've collected represents less than half of one percent of the tenant community and an even lower percentage of landlords, probably 0.001%. So, I don't know why any agent would pay them the time of day let alone promote their cause.
I'm not a biggest fan of Allagents myself but I am hearing it coming more and more in our patch. The agent a few doors down for us even runs a competition every month for the person that can get the most reviews on it.
The ESTA awards are a bit of a joke now. I know offices that put their own feedback on from within their own office. How can that be right??
If feedback is provided anonymously and not for the public to read themselves, How can they possibly make a judgment on an agents ability?
I think we are a few years away before Allagents awards will get any credibility within the industry, but I really do believe that unless the ESTAS changes the way it operates and show some transparency on its results them it simply going to struggle to get past its 11th year. IMHO
@ ESTA's WINNER
Sorry, but you're synopsis of my company couldn't be further from the truth. We're happily providing a great customer service and top of our game at both our offices in a very fierce area after just 10 years in business, thanks very much. We've caught up and overtaking the other 1-2 office independents, 10+ branch and multi-national agents who've been around for many more years than us.
What gripes me is the misleading nature of these "awards". It's only the few that pay to enter that can win it. So if your business doesn't enter into one of the other awards this year and your neighbouring agent does, but you know he/she does less business than you and you know they give a poorer service does enter and wins... Is he better than you by telling the public that he won the TOSSA's or whatever it's called for his region/area?... No. But that's what he will portray.
It's not a good sample of all the agents in the area.
I know if your not in it, you can't win it, but I'd rather spend my money on something that benefits or gives something
back to my clients.
ps. Why are so many people frightened to use their proper names on here?
@london agent (or should that be @allagent)
You are comparing rotten apples with pears. There are 38000 reasons why all agents will never have any credibility, namely each of the adverse reviews submitted by disaffected, malcontent former tenants most of whom being unable to differentiate between their former landlord and the agent who facilitated their tenancy.
The Estas are open to everyone and agents can choose whether or not they wish to participate. If they do, they pay a modest entry fee but any landlord client who gives feedback about that agent is doing so anonymously via a 3rd party and can be as honest as they like about them.
If agents choose not to participate, well that's your choice but don't slag off the agents who care about their businesses and welcome genuine feedback from their clients. In my book, there's only two reasons why you wouldn't participate; either you don't care enough about your service levels or you're worried what your clients might say about you.
So in summary - allagents; a site for vitriolic ex-tenants (who are not the client of the agent but the client of the landlord). Estas; a portal for receiving genuine feedback from your landlord clients.
Any landlord reading this and looking for an agent please do the following; please read all of the allagents reviews about the agent in your town and shortlist the one who gets the worst ex-tenant feedback because that agent is likely to be doing their job properly. Then read all of the feedback on the Estas entrants in your town and shortlist the one who receives the best commendations from fellow landlords. It will be no coincidence that you will have a shortlist of one agent.
I doubt anyone but the organisers, and a few of the entrants, take the estas as a serious competition to find the best agent anywhere. Its entered in the hope that some marketing advantage will come out of it - look, we won the best agent award for Little Testis on the Naze; it means nothing to Joe Public in reality. If it was open to all agents, i.e. not a pay to win type affair, then it might have some validity.
I really don't see how allagents can be compared with the estas; its mostly a sniping gallery more than a serious attempt at offering a consumer review site.
If you genuinely provide a great service to your clients, and your tenants are content to then you don't need a pre paid award to say you're doing a good job.
I don't know how the ESTAS are going to be able to continue now since Allagents have introduced the UKs largest customer review awards.
It's hard to beat the credibility of theirs when they are free of charge and with every agent in the UK entered.
More worrying is the differences in the results. We should expect a few differences but just about every winner of the ESTAS is poorly rated on Allagents. Surely questions have to be asked here??
@ESTAS winner - really? You've paid to be awarded, plus I very much doubt any/many of your competitors entered. Amongst the entrants in the area I cover are two of the most appalling agents, if feedback was unbiased and invited from all clients they'd still be at the bottom of the allagents site, where they belong.
@ Michael...We were a regional winner at last years ESTAS and very proud to be. We did not offer any incentives to our clients to vote and encouraged them to be as honest with their feedback and scoring.
It sounds to me like you have unsatisfied clients and that you wouldn't be confident of winning anything. So instead of focusing on improving your service levels, you just moan about the agents out there offering decent service to their clients and who enter these awards and get the recognition they deserve.
.
And the franchisee that boasts their office has won the BEST AGENT award which actually his franchise won out of only 2 entrants in the large chain category! Shouldn't be allowed to mislead the public in this way. Hopefully the public see through it
I agree, there are just two from our town -both franchises - out of the 30+ that are engaged in lettings on some level.
Its not as though the general public are even aware of these awards, much less interested in the outcome.
I'm not a believer in these 'pay-to-enter' awards where Agents encourage customer reviews by offering them incentives to do so!
There are only a small % in each town who enter so to say that they won 'Best XXXXX' in the region is very mis-leading.
If there was government licensing of all agents and an awards system that all agents would be entered into automatically via their subscription to the licensing scheme, that would be something worth being judged on and winning.