Quattro Development Shares Its Secrets to Outstanding Customer Service

It’s no secret that customer service will make or break any business. According to research company McKinsey & Company, improving the customer experience increases revenue by as much as 7% and profitability by as much as 2%.

Michael Liyeos and Rob Walters, the co-founders of real estate development firm Quattro Development, understand the power of customer experience. Since 2008, the duo has worked with national brands across the United States. These clients demand excellence, which the build-to-suit development company works hard to provide.

Instead of focusing solely on profits, Quattro Development takes a uniquely client-focused approach that can be rare in the real estate development industry. “If we service their needs, then the business will take care of itself,” Liyeos says. “We’ve all worked very hard to be really good at what we do, work hard, follow through, and do the things that we say that we’re going to do.”

Rob Walters and Michael Liyeos share how focusing on their tenants contributed to Quattro Development’s growth, as well as how their team invests in customer relationships.

Interact With Clients Regularly

Walters and Liyeos believe constant client interaction and communication are key to forging profitable, long-term working relationships. While the co-founders don’t limit themselves to specific tasks, they try to focus their time and attention on tenants. “Interfacing with tenants is probably the most productive use of our time, whether that’s being in the market, driving with them, having dinners, being at conferences, meeting new people, networking. That kind of thing is number one,” Rob Walters says.

But these are far from sales pitches. If anything, Walters and Liyeos treat client interactions as an opportunity to better understand their customers. It’s a time to sit down and listen.

“Developers want to talk so much about themselves. But I think the tenants want to talk about what they need. To be able to listen and try to just do what they want instead of telling about the way you do things is helpful,” Michael Liyeos says. “I think we try to be humble and really pay attention to our client’s needs and see things through their eyes and try to understand their business and put their needs first. I think it’s refreshing and a competitive advantage of ours to build our business that way.”

Understand Client Concerns and Needs

Instead of taking a prescriptive approach to real estate, Rob Walters and Michael Liyeos collaborate with their tenants to find the best possible properties across the United States. It takes some time to familiarize themselves with a tenant’s needs, but once they know what the client wants, the Quattro Development team knows how to execute their vision.

“Our tenants want to find a specific type of real estate within a market. Historically, it’s been guys who want the Main and Main corner,” Walters explains. “Other tenants can’t afford the Main and Main corner, so our focus shifts to real estate that fits those tenants’ budget. Some tenants want to be near a ‘regional draw’ while others are better suited to ‘daily needs’ traffic. You can’t prescribe a one fits all size to each tenant, but once you understand the needs, they can be replicated over and over across the country.”

Since Quattro Development specializes in serving national chain brands, taking the time to first understand a client’s needs makes it easy to expand across the nation. “We’re able to take and cut and paste that knowledge across the country without really having to know that much about the local market,” Rob Walters says.

“We’re comfortable going anywhere and everywhere. But we try to keep the tenants the same and the building types the same,” Michael Liyeos adds. “We’re a cookie-cutter developer from that perspective, but we’ll go anywhere. I think typically development is a local game where the developer is pretty deeply involved in a certain community, and they’ll do a lot of different types of projects within the same community or general area.”

Hire Employees Who Treat Customers Right

In the beginning, Quattro Development was a two-person show. Today, however, Walters and Liyeos oversee a team of eight scrappy employees. Instead of managing everything themselves, the co-founders rely on their trustworthy staff to produce great work and treat clients right.

Effective hiring is a big challenge for any business, but Rob Walters and Michael Liyeos have successfully built a strong team through personal relationships. “A lot of the people that we’ve hired have come from relationships, either family or friends or whatever that have been referred to us. That definitely helps,” Liyeos says. “I think we’ve been pretty good at finding the right people.”

Instead of hiring people based just on their skills, the co-founders focus instead on hiring good people who work hard. As a result, the Quattro Development team cares about treating its tenants well. “I think once you have that team, then when people outside the organization deal with you, it’s a different feeling than if it’s just people fulfilling a role for their paycheck and couldn’t care less. I think we try to get people to really care about the company as though it’s a family,” Walters explains.

As great as this is for tenants, it also has an added bonus for Walters and Liyeos: the Quattro Development team is easy to manage. “Everybody knows what their job is, and they know how to manage their schedule to take as much time off as they need to enjoy their lives. We don’t make people come into the office. We just don’t have many rules. It’s like everybody knows what they’re supposed to do, and they do it,” Michael Liyeos says.

Michael Liyeos and Rob Walters take an unconventional approach to business, but it’s paying off. With clients like Chipotle, Guidepost Montessori, Chick-Fil-A, and Aspen Dental in its portfolio, Quattro Development is proof that treating tenants well is the key to business expansion and longevity. “Good things will come around when you’re a decent human being to other people,” Walters says.