First-Class Customer Care, Anytime, Anywhere

by Steve Lewkowitz

Home builders need to view providing good customer care as just as important as being attentive to customer needs during the sales process.  It is critical to maintain the previously developed relationship with the homebuyer and continue to build upon it.

Making customer care a priority ensures your company can profit from future sales opportunities, improve the efficiency of its processes, and elevate customer satisfaction, which can lead to referrals and more profits.

First impressions are everything, so good customer care starts when homebuyers are prospects and continues after they purchase and close on their home.  This means home builders must focus on good communication, which involves more than just responding to a customer’s inquiry.  Good communication should be quick and personalized, and it should provide the information that is requested.  This does not necessarily require additional staffing resources.  For example, automation features in a customer relationship management (CRM) system can provide an immediate automatic response to requests with exactly what the customer wants, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Continue Reading...

An automated reply telling the customer that someone will contact them soon about their request isn’t good enough.  Giving prospects and homebuyers the information they want and acting upon requests quickly shows them you care and leads to high customer satisfaction.  Plus, it doesn’t require a lot of resources - an easy win for your company. Also, the more you learn about your prospects, the better equipped you will be to take targeted steps to ensure they purchase a home from you instead of the competition.

Another aspect of good customer care is getting to know your prospects and homebuyers and learning how you can better serve them, which can result in future sales and improved customer satisfaction.  Surveying prospects and homebuyers at regular intervals allows you to build a profile that your sales team - or any other appropriate employee in your company - can access.  These surveys gather valuable information that can provide a variety of benefits, such as alerting home builders of potential issues, allowing them to be proactive, or learning about a homebuyer’s desire to purchase another home.  Builders might also find new home products of interest to their homebuyers and then partner with vendors to create co-marketing campaigns.

In addition to improving your ability to provide good customer care, a CRM system will bring opportunities to increase revenues, reduce costs, and gain insight about your prospects, homebuyers, and subcontractors/suppliers by sharing information across the organization.  This 360-degree view of homebuyers includes which options they’ve selected for their home, information about their mortgage and title, and their buying preferences.  A CRM system makes it easier for home builders to track, measure, and improve the customer service they provide and make changes where necessary. 

In conjunction, some CRM systems allow homeowners to submit their own service incidents through online self-service web portals, reducing the need for customer care staff.  Also, rule-based routing mechanisms may allow service requests to be automatically routed to the right service agent or sub-contractor, accelerating issue resolution.  Based on the issue, the system should know who originally performed the work and what options were included in the home.  Work orders can then be automatically generated and dispatched.  Similarly, when service issues require urgent intervention, the system will increase their severity rating.

These web portals can also be rich resources for homebuyers, providing them with warranty information, construction status, estimated closing date, and more, giving home builders a central location for communicating with their customers and reducing phone queries.

Placing an emphasis on delivering good customer care should be looked upon as an investment in the future, not an added cost. Successful home builders recognize the importance of reacting quickly to customers, providing detailed and accurate information, and meeting commitments.  They see the value that customer care brings to their company and how it is strategic to remaining competitive.

It’s not a secret that people tend to remember the last interaction they have with a company best.  Implement processes and solutions that ensure they have a positive experience every time, and reap the rewards.

Steve Lewkowitz is Professional Services Director of the Home Building & Real Estate Group within the Pivotal CRM team at CDC Software. CDC Software offers the industry-leading Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate, which offers pre-built integration with the Envision options management solution.