Only 36% of Brokerages Are Satisfied With Their Vendor Support
36% satisfied with vendor support. 55% train in-house. 10% have no training at all. The support model is broken.
You buy the software. You sign the contract. You start implementation. And then you find out that getting help when something breaks means sending an email into a queue and hoping someone responds before the next commission cycle.
In the 2024 State of Real Estate Brokerage Technology Survey, conducted by TotalBrokerage in collaboration with T3 Sixty with over 100 respondents, we asked brokerages how satisfied they are with their technology vendors' support. Approximately 36% said they were satisfied or very satisfied. That means roughly two out of three brokerages are getting support that ranges from mediocre to actively bad.
This is the first time we have measured vendor support satisfaction in our annual survey. There is no 2023 baseline to compare against. But you do not need a trendline to know that 36% satisfaction is a problem, especially when you pair it with how brokerages are actually training their people and how little of the technology they are paying for gets adopted.
The satisfaction numbers are worse than they look
Here is the full breakdown from Q27 of the survey.
| Response | Approx. % |
|---|---|
| Very satisfied | ~18% |
| Satisfied | ~18% |
| Somewhat satisfied | ~15% |
| Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied | ~18% |
| Somewhat dissatisfied | ~8% |
| Dissatisfied | ~2% |
| Very dissatisfied | ~5% |
If you are generous and include somewhat satisfied, you get to roughly 51%. But somewhat satisfied is not a vote of confidence. It is the answer people give when support technically exists but does not make their life easier. The approximately 18% who said neither are telling you they have given up having an opinion, which usually means they have given up asking for help.
So you have roughly 36% who are genuinely satisfied, another 15% who are lukewarm, and the rest either indifferent or actively unhappy. For an industry spending thousands of dollars per agent per year on technology, that is a terrible return on the relationship side of the transaction.
Email is the dominant support channel. That tells you something.
We asked brokerages which support channel they prefer when dealing with vendors.
| Channel | Approx. % |
|---|---|
| ~65% | |
| Phone | ~10% |
| Text | ~8% |
| Website/portal | ~8% |
| Online chat | ~5% |
| In-person | ~3% |
Approximately 65% of brokerages prefer email for vendor support. On the surface, that might look like a preference. It is not. It is a workaround.
Brokerage operations staff prefer email because it creates a paper trail. When something goes wrong with a commission calculation or a compliance workflow, you need documentation. You need to be able to point to a thread and say "I reported this on Tuesday and nobody responded until Friday." Email is the default because it is the safest option in a low-trust support environment.
Phone, text, and chat combined add up to roughly 23%. In-person support barely registers at approximately 3%. The industry's support model has largely become asynchronous by default, not because asynchronous is better, but because real-time support is either unavailable or unreliable.
Brokerages are training agents themselves because vendors will not
This is where the data gets uncomfortable.
| Training method | Approx. % |
|---|---|
| In-house training | ~55% |
| Peer-to-peer | ~15% |
| No formal training | ~10% |
| External consultants | ~8% |
| Online courses | ~5% |
Approximately 55% of brokerages handle agent training on technology in-house. Another approximately 15% rely on peer-to-peer learning, which is a polite way of saying agents figure it out from each other. And approximately 10% have no formal training at all.
Add those up. Roughly 80% of brokerages are either training agents themselves, relying on informal knowledge sharing, or doing nothing. Only about 13% are using external resources like consultants or structured online courses.
Think about what that means operationally. You pay a vendor for software. Then you pay your own staff to train your agents on that software. Your operations manager or transaction coordinator becomes an unpaid extension of the vendor's support team. Every hour they spend teaching agents how to use a tool they already bought is an hour they are not spending on actual operations.
The 10% with no formal training is the most telling number. Those brokerages have essentially given up on the idea that their technology tools will be used correctly. They bought the software, it sits there, and agents either figure it out or ignore it.
Bad support directly causes low adoption
The connection between these numbers and the adoption data from the same survey is hard to miss.
Approximately 28% of brokerages reported overall technology adoption below 20%. Another approximately 12% reported adoption between 20% and 49%. That means roughly 40% of brokerages have less than half their organization using the tools they pay for.
We covered the adoption problem in depth in Agent Technology Adoption Is a Compliance Risk. But adoption does not happen in a vacuum. When vendor support is mediocre and training falls entirely on internal staff, you get exactly the adoption numbers we are seeing.
Here is how the cycle works. A brokerage buys new software. The vendor provides initial setup and maybe a few training sessions. Then ongoing support drops to email-only with slow response times. The brokerage's internal staff picks up the slack, but they have their own jobs to do. Training becomes inconsistent. Agents hit friction, get frustrated, and go back to whatever they were doing before. The tool sits there. Adoption stalls. The brokerage starts describing the technology as something that just checks a box.
The approximately 30% of brokerages that said their tech checks a box in the 2024 survey? This support and training gap is a big piece of why.
You are paying twice for the same software
The real cost of bad vendor support is not frustration. It is money.
When your operations team spends time training agents on vendor software, that is a cost. When agents cannot get issues resolved quickly and spend time on workarounds, that is a cost. When adoption stays low because support is bad and the brokerage cannot recoup the value of the subscription, that is a cost.
None of this shows up on the vendor's invoice. But it shows up in your cost per agent calculations, your staff utilization, and the gap between what your technology should be producing and what it actually does.
This is the operational drag problem. It is not that the software does not work. It is that the support model around the software adds friction to your operation instead of removing it. You bought the tool to save time. Then you spend time making the tool work. The net benefit is a lot smaller than the sales pitch suggested.
What good vendor support actually looks like
If the survey data describes the problem, here is what the solution looks like. And it is not complicated.
Good vendor support means someone picks up the phone. It means when your transaction coordinator hits an issue at 3pm on a Friday, they get a real answer, not an auto-reply promising a response within 48 business hours. It means your brokerage does not have to build its own training program from scratch because the vendor has one that actually works.
When you are evaluating brokerage software vendors, support quality should be weighted as heavily as feature lists. Ask to talk to their support team before you sign. Ask existing customers how long it takes to get a response. Ask what happens after implementation is done and the initial handholding period ends.
The brokerages in the approximately 36% who are satisfied? They did not get lucky. They chose vendors who treat support as part of the product, not as a cost center to minimize.
Where TotalBrokerage fits
TotalBrokerage was built by brokers who lived through every version of the bad support experience. That is why support is not an afterthought. It is built into how the platform operates.
Transactions, commissions, compliance, e-signatures, reporting, and agent management live in one system. That already reduces the number of vendors you need to deal with and the number of support queues you are waiting in. But beyond consolidation, TotalBrokerage provides hands-on onboarding and ongoing support that does not disappear after the contract is signed.
Your operations team should be running your operation. Not serving as an unpaid training department for a vendor that stopped returning calls.
Book a demo and find out what it is like to work with a vendor that actually picks up the phone.
About this survey
The 2024 State of Real Estate Brokerage Technology Survey was conducted by TotalBrokerage in collaboration with T3 Sixty. Over 100 brokerage leaders participated. The survey covered technology usage, satisfaction, adoption, vendor support, training methods, and back office operations across the residential real estate industry.
For the full results, read the 2024 survey overview.
FAQ
What percentage of brokerages are satisfied with their technology vendor support?
Approximately 36% of brokerages reported being satisfied or very satisfied with their vendor support in the 2024 State of Real Estate Brokerage Technology Survey. Another approximately 15% said somewhat satisfied. The remaining roughly half were either indifferent or dissatisfied. This is the first year vendor support satisfaction was measured, establishing it as a baseline for future comparison.
Why do most brokerages prefer email for vendor support?
Approximately 65% of brokerages said email is their preferred vendor support channel. This is less about preference and more about necessity. Email creates a paper trail, which matters when dealing with issues around commissions, compliance, and operational workflows. Brokerages default to email because real-time support channels like phone and chat are often unavailable or unreliable from their technology vendors.
How do brokerages train agents on technology?
Approximately 55% of brokerages handle technology training in-house with their own staff. Another approximately 15% rely on peer-to-peer learning between agents. About 10% have no formal training at all. Only approximately 13% use external consultants or online courses. This means the vast majority of brokerages absorb the full cost of training internally, effectively subsidizing their vendors' support gaps.
How does bad vendor support affect technology adoption?
There is a direct connection. Approximately 28% of brokerages reported technology adoption below 20%, and roughly 40% have less than half their organization using the tools they pay for. When vendor support is slow or inadequate, training falls on internal staff who already have full-time jobs. Training becomes inconsistent, agents hit friction, and adoption stalls. The support gap is a primary driver of the low adoption numbers the industry continues to report.
What should brokerages look for in vendor support when evaluating software?
Evaluate support quality before you sign. Ask to interact with the vendor's support team during the sales process. Ask existing customers about response times and post-implementation support. Find out whether training resources are included or if your team will have to build its own program. Support should be treated as part of the product, not an afterthought. The brokerages reporting high satisfaction chose vendors that invest in ongoing support, not just initial onboarding.
Why does this survey matter if there is no prior year comparison for support data?
This is the first benchmark. You need a starting point before you can measure change. The 36% satisfaction figure establishes where the industry stands today. More importantly, it connects to data points we do have year over year context for, like adoption rates and the growing share of brokerages that describe their technology as a checkbox. Vendor support quality is a missing variable that helps explain those trends.
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