A few months ago, I was leading a design-thinking program called Skunkworks, after Lockheed Martin’s super-secret innovation program. An important (and fun) part of Skunkworks is to observe home builders and buyers “in the wild” to better understand what motivates them.
When we asked how this impacts the customer experience, Nick responded: “Communication is everything. I have some buyers that want construction updates 3 times a week. Others are more hands-off and only want to know when something is wrong or the schedule changes.”
When asked what construction software he uses to provide updates to the buyers, he just laughed. “Our construction software doesn’t help with that. It’s great for managing resources and updating timelines, but there’s no way we would use it to communicate with our buyers. It’s way easier to just pick up the phone and call.”
Nick’s not alone. At Bokka, we conduct Journey Mapping workshops with builders where we dig deep into what drives customer satisfaction, and construction communication is always at the top of the list. For smaller custom builders it’s easier to manage. The buyer usually has a direct line to the company owner, which keeps confidence high. If “Betty Buyer” drives by and sees there’s a cracked window, she can just call the President and get reassurance immediately that a new one is already on the way.
It’s different for the regional/national home builder. In this case, it’s much harder to get someone on the phone that actually knows what’s going on. This person may be able to answer some questions, assuming they have access to the construction software, but that information isn’t always up-to-date. The Construction Supervisor is the one that knows what’s going on, but he’s carrying 8 or 9 other houses in his workload. And his top priority is making sure his crew shows up to do the work. A cracked window is at the bottom of his list of priorities (right below talking to a frustrated customer like Betty).
These are real problems for home builders. A cracked window is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It will certainly be fixed well before Betty moves in. But coming back to Nick’s point – it’s a trust thing.
In our buyer research, both with the Skunkworks program and the Home Buyer Conversion Report, we’ve found the 2 most important things missing from the home buying experience are joy and confidence. And it’s confidence that matters most. If you’re a builder, then you’re all-too-familiar with the customer who has “gone off the rails.” In other words, something (or things) happened somewhere along the journey that caused the buyer to be so disenfranchised with your company. Maybe even to the point where they can’t be made happy again.
The reasons always vary. Bob goes on vacation, and his replacement drops the ball. Or the Cliffstone exterior is no longer available, and the buyer is last to know. Or maybe the closing date gets pushed due to weather. Stuff happens. These are complex homes we’re constructing. Something is inevitably going to go wrong.
But for Betty, it’s not the cracked window that causes her to go off the rails. It’s the lack of confidence. When she called, you didn’t even know about the window. In her mind, what else is happening that you don’t know about? So she starts coming on-site and micro-managing. It’s her house, after all. At this point, she’s looking for things to go wrong. And this continues all the way through closing. When it comes time to write a home builder review of your company you can bet it’s not good.
Research from Forrester
Sara Lambert wrote a great article along these lines about the importance of proactively collecting customer feedback during the buyer’s journey. While we know collecting feedback is critical to understanding how the buyer feels, we also need to be proactive with updates on the construction of their home to keep their trust level high.
It’s complicated. For example, who should be responsible for giving the buyer updates? Sales seems to be a logical answer since they’re trained to build relationships with the customer. I’ve seen some builders do this with moderate success. But it’s not scalable. It means a salesperson is spending an entire day out of every week driving around taking pictures. Then it requires going back to the office and sending construction updates to recent buyers. This can present a problem since they get paid to write contracts, and they don’t always know what’s going on at the job site.
This actually makes the most sense since they’re the most informed and empowered person on the job site. But going back to our example above, they don’t have the time or the patience to dedicate to this “customer service” task. They get paid to make sure homes are delivered on time and with minimal defects.
At this point, you’re probably thinking “there must be construction software that gives the buyer updates on their home.” This is exactly what we thought when we asked Nick about it. In fact, some of the builders we did Journey Mapping for even said their software had the ability to give the home buyer construction updates. So we asked, “why aren’t you using it?”
The answer was the same as Nick’s. “It’s too cumbersome. Our field guys are too busy to mess with it.” Some builders gave the feature a shot, but then turned it off because the (inaccurate) timelines were scaring the customers, making things even worse.
This was the conclusion the Skunkworks team came to after the field research. So the team set out to prototype a solution to test with select builder participants. The early prototypes of the construction update software proved that its a viable solution, but only if it met the following criteria:
The goal of Skunkworks is to innovate new products and test the viability of them for development by the Bokka team. With that completed, we quickly ramped up production of the Homebuyer Communication Tool – which was then renamed Builder Signal.
To learn more about the Builder Signal construction software, visit the website and request a demo and a free trial.
