Teresa Boardman has some fun today with integrating customer service into her real estate business. Teresa has a wit and business sense I can resonate with.

Real estate is a personal business. Always has been and always will, regardless of how much technology we try to integrate into it.

Most Realtors will tell you that 50% to 70% of their business comes from referrals. I know several agents that only work referrals. If a call comes in from an unknown person, they give it to someone else in their office.

Referrals won’t happen with poor customer service.

We recently merged our team with the Mees team. Part of the value in this for our clients is increased customer service. Even though both teams placed customer service high on their list of priorities, combining the teams allows us to bring even more personal contact into our client relationships.

One reason is that we have a full time Tech/Internet Marketing person. He’s writing this very post. This frees up the other four team members for more client contact.

The same is true for our Escrow Coordinator, Renee. Renee works soley for our team. There is an escrow coordinator in our Danville office who works with the other 190 agents in the office. We feel it is better service for our clients to have an escrow coordinator dedicated to the needs of just our clients.

The escrow process can be very complicated and with all the changes happening in the lending industry, everyday can bring unforeseen surprises.

We talk about “client focused team support” on our site and we walk the talk. It’s all about the client and every client brings us a unique situation. It’s personal to them and us.

I was over at the Inman Bloggers Connect in San Francisco yesterday at the Palace Hotel. The Palace is a great venue but one of the main meeting rooms suffered from being adjacent to an alley or loading dock or a construction zone as I kept hearing the beeping of trucks in reverse. Then again, maybe it was all the coffee.

As much as I tried to connect with everyone, I left feeling that I had not connected with as many as I had wished to. So, it was more of a misconnect for me as there were just too many bloggers and too little time to connect with them all.

Joseph Natividad, new guest author for The Harper Team, attended as our guest. He was a great hit with all he met. We are working to get his blog up to speed which should happen this week. It was Joseph’s first conference and trade show. We stopped at everybooth so he could fill his bag with all the free stuff. He now has enough pens to get him through his first two years at UC San Diego where he will be majoring in Economics.

The first person I ran into was Teresa Boardman the evening before at the Thirsty Bear – Zillow’s Bloggers’ Beer event. Teresa is more petite than I had imagined and her half-picture doesn’t do her justice. So, I snapped a quick pic which she immediately objected to. I’ve been threatened with the wrath of God or worse if I publish it. So, to minimize my suffering I only publish the “other half” of Teresa here.

Kevin Boer (3 Oceans Real Estate) and Pat Kitano (TransparentRE) seemed to have the fix in with Inman as they were on stage numerous times throughout the day. Kevin did a great job as moderator of a panel. Here you see the two of them – doing what?? Kevin looks like he’s about to fly away and Pat is going for the free water. Sidekick Dean Guadagni (Dean’s Guide) was suffering a bad cold and looked it, so I burned all pics of him.

Meeting Jeff Turner was great. Unfortunately his wife, Rocky, was not able to make it. Jeff showcased his Real Estate Shows product at a panel on video/image technology for the real estate industry.  My opinion – Real Estate Shows seems like an easier more economical means to showcase homes than the other two video formats presented by the panel.

After speaking on at least one panel if not 6, Real Estate Tomato author Jim Cronin could not restrain himself any longer and stepped to the mic to ask advice from the “Top Bloggers” panel. Just goes to show that even when you’re one of the most recognized authorities on real estate blogging, you may still have a question or two.

The impression I had from the conference was that attendance seemed to about half seasoned bloggers and half new authors. I met many more people than I photographed which makes me wonder why – I usually am much more active with my camera. All that listening must have gotten in the way.

Teresa Boardman over at St. Paul Real Estate is having an early summer weenie roast. It seems like some of the 8 zillion blogs out there are missing a healthy dose of relish. Teresa is breaking out all of the condiments and firing up the grill to address the situation.

Here are some of the blogdogs we expect to see getting roasted.

• The onion-dog - the anemic writing and ego-centric nature of the posts on some blogs just bring out the tears in me.
• The ketchup-dog - these blogs assault your senses of integrity, fair play and harmony it’s a real bloodletting at these crime scenes.
• The bland-dog -  Breakout the stone-ground mustard for these downers of the blogosphere!
• The sauerkraut-dog - where would we be without those more interested in attacking than engaging?
• The gut-bomb-dog – these babies are loaded with every condiment and additive you can imagine – they can actually alter DNA - they give me gas.

Mother Teresa is a kind-hearted soul. If you read her regularly, you know she is a dedicated professional and avid (not rabid) blogger. She is not only interested in raising the bar in the real estate industry, but also in blogging. While others limbo in life, Teresa high jumps.

If she had a decade or so she could probably heal the pathetic, the lazy and the self-engorged. The sweet thing is that she is just out there doing her thing and enjoying almost every second of it.

So, grab your weenies and get over to the party.