River Rock Real Estate Group

River Rock is a different breed of property services firm. A boutique regional firm, they take a page from hospitality and other customer service industries--client-focused, with an emphasis on high-touch, high quality client relationships.

One of the ways they achieve high customer satisfaction is by actively appreciating, engaging, and training their employees. As one of the company's principals likes to say, "Happy employees provide better service."

When he found KLR Consulting, Steve Core, River Rock's president, was impressed with Kristi's bio and background, and then when they met in person, "I was instantly comfortable with her. She was aligned with our values and understood our needs." So much so that River Rock has engaged Kristi's services multiple times.

Coaching: Communication & Relationship-Building

The company keeps their employees trained and up-to-date on the latest evolutions in commercial properties and property management. Skills like communication and listening don't get reinforced as often.

"It's mostly a familiarity thing. We talk about it internally all the time, but that gets old, and people glaze over, ‘Yeah yeah, we've heard it before.' Plus, they're busy," says Steve. "We needed to bring in an outside influencer, with a different approach and perspective, to really bring the message home."

They also needed to do succession planning, preparing some of their people for supervisory or management roles. "It's hard to take that step from individual contributor to supervisor, and it really helps to give them someone, like Kristi, that they can talk to and rely on."

A couple of River Rock people, who they refer to collectively as "Rockstars" rather than employees, are dealing with some challenging client demands, as well. "Kristi is coaching them on how to approach and work with the client in a different manner."

Steve says, "We brought Kristi in for a lot of different reasons!" Kristi started out coaching individuals, and has become their go-to person for leadership and management training. One of the people she was coaching suggested that Kristi would be a great choice to help with customer service training. "When our ‘Rockstars' are engaged and happy, we are successful. It's a pretty simple equation."

Powerful Conversations plus DiSC® Intro

To improve customer service, Kristi facilitated a workshop for the whole company, with a focus on communication and developing powerful conversation and listening skills.

Breaking it into separate Northern California and Southern California sessions, River Rock offered the program to their entire staff. "Every employee attended, from project coordinators to accountants and the property managers to the executive team."

Steve says that both Kristi's message and her style resonated with everyone. "People walked away talking about how much they enjoyed the session, as well as about what they learned and what they were going to try out in their work." He also felt like they all were engaged, especially by the exercises and activities.

People were also intrigued by the introduction to the DiSC® assessment.

Learning Translated into Action

People are providing positive feedback on both the workshop and the coaching. "I'm hearing that they tried applying this tactic or this approach that Kristi suggested and that it's really helped get them through some tricky situations."

Steve also says that having supervisors and employees in the same workshop is turning out to be an advantage, because they can reinforce the learning and remind each other of the different tools and tactics.

"We shared the same learning, so we can implement it on a team basis, which is great."

Positive Response, Positive Results

Steve says that he also had at least one person come to him after the workshop to as if they could also get coaching time with Kristi.

He feels that for any organization that needs to help employees shift perspective, or find direction in their career, or that have challenges such as managing staff or handling tricky client situations, Kristi is the one to call. "She has good exercises and concrete action steps for people to put into practice. Her background has exposed her to a lot of different issues and challenges in the corporate world across all disciplines and that puts her in a unique spot which benefits all of us, in all industries."

"The way Kristi communicates with us is fantastic--she balances keeping management informed with keeping employee confidentiality to ensure a trusting relationship.

Steve is pretty thrilled with the way people are responding to Kristi's programs. "They've taken it very positively! Some people have really changed their approach already, and it's made a big impact to the way we operate. It's been time well-spent."