Lauren Hansen, CEO of IRES MLS in Colorado would agree with Charlie Chaplin when he said, “A day without laughter is a day wasted,” for she and her team came up with some great ideas to “lighten up” their MLS website.
Imagine this: You are an IRES MLS customer, and you hurriedly type in your username-incorrectly. Instead of receiving the usual boring error message “Username or Password Invalid”, you get a different message; it reads: “Going incognito today? We aren’t sure who you are!”
“When I type in my password too quickly and I get the ‘are you going incognito?’ message,” Lauren says, “I chuckle!”
According to a longitudinal study conducted at Loma Linda University, a leading medical research institute in California, laughing not only boosts hormones in our brain that help preserve our health, but also reduce stress hormones that can be deeply damaging to our bodies. In a world full of frustrating technological failures, it is good to know someone is doing their part to help alleviate some of the irritation we all experience on a daily basis.
Since these frustrating experiences are something we can all relate to, it gives MLSs a great entry point in which to inject a little personality into an automated process. When you make someone laugh, you make a connection. And that is a good thing for customers who get to release some stress while making the process of working with the MLS a little lighter and more fun. Like these error messages from ColoProperty.com:
“We have all encountered those frustrating situations where a boring page loads telling us there is an error and it just brings out the worst in us!” Lauren continues. “So we decided to have some fun with it. If people laugh, then it’s doing its job!”
As an Ires user, I can attest to the fact that there is always something new going on in the system. And yes, a lot of the little unexpected things that pop up DO make me smile! Thanks, and keep up the good work!