How Important are Construction Updates?

As market conditions gravitate towards a more normalized state, it’s time to bring the focus back to what matters most – our customers. After all, without them, there are no homes to build and no trades to employ. And we’re going to need those referrals more than ever.

As a result, there’s a lot of talk lately about prioritizing the customer experience. The past few years have been great for builders, but have worn thin on home buyers’ confidence, with many feeling undervalued amidst waiting lists and high prices. So where do you start making improvements? Which part of the customer experience makes the biggest difference?

I’m here to tell you that improving your customer experience starts and ends with clear, structured and proactive communication. In other words: construction updates.

Here’s Why Construction Updates Are So Important:

The highlight of every new home buyer’s experience is watching their dream come to life. Seeing things progress from a hole to a foundation, to a house, to their house – is the part they’ll never forget.

Unless we never show it to them. In which case they’ll drop in every day to sneak a look, whether we allow it or not. We have to be proactive in construction updates or risk losing their trust. And once that train goes off the track it’s nearly impossible to get it back on.

The first step in streamlining this communication involves identifying the right point of contact within your organization. Is it your sales team? Your construction team? The key is ensuring we equip our teams with the right information. To get the right answer, we will delve into these questions and help navigate the discussions you’re having.

Consider Your Buyer’s Point of View

When customers are left to their own devices to interpret what they witness during their home construction, we inevitably face difficult conversations. There are builder-specific practices that can leave our buyers baffled. For instance, buyers often don’t understand why their beautiful (and costly) cabinets are installed before the walls are painted. From a builder’s perspective, this makes perfect sense, but we should start viewing our practices from a buyer’s viewpoint. Absence of clear communication breeds worst-case scenario imaginings in the buyer’s mind, potentially eroding any trust and confidence they might have in their builder, leading to undue stress.

For instance, have you heard customers say, “Well, it’s a good thing I’m watching to catch these mistakes?” Often, what they observe is a standard part of the building process. A clear example is when a customer sees a broken window during siding. The repair does not happen as quickly as they expect, leading to heated discussions with the building team. Clear, concise communication and expectation setting could have prevented this negative experience.

The Data Behind What Buyers Want

The purchase of a brand new home is a thrilling, yet intimidating process for buyers. Selecting the right floor plan, the perfect homesite, and personalizing their home is both exhilarating and nerve-racking. The building process, filled with uncertainty and anxiety, often serves as the primary source of frustration for your buyers.

Our research, coupled with Zillow’s data, has revealed the most significant pain point for home buyers building a new home. It’s not an uncertain schedule, delays in construction, the occasional reselection of finishes, the timing of selling an existing home, or fluctuating interest rates. These factors, while part of the process, can be managed through proper expectation setting.

The primary pain point for home buyers is inadequate or even misleading communication from their builders during construction. They crave trustworthy, reliable communication.

Proactive Communication Solution: Builder Signal

This is why Builder Signal exists. This communication app delivers real-time updates, providing a photographic journey that chronicles the build. Builder representatives can share their expertise alongside images of the construction process.

Moreover, it allows managers to monitor, in real-time, how their team delivers updates via an Administrative Dashboard. Providing an excellent buying experience is not enough; it’s the journey through the building stages that leaves a lasting impression. How effective are you at delivering a superior building experience? Ask yourself these questions:

• Have you examined your process through the buyer’s lens recently?
• Have you involved your customer in your process?
• Have you taken the opportunity to share your expertise to help your customer learn along the way?
• The Customer Experience is the story your customers tell their friends. Have you provided them with a great story to tell?

The Impact of Communication on Builders’ Survey Scores

Builder survey scores show a correlation between good and bad communication and its impact on customer referrals or the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

This builder, like many others, had struggled with providing consistent, meaningful communication during the construction phase. They began employing Builder Signal for communicating building activity status.

As illustrated in the graph below, there is a clear relationship between providing proactive weekly updates on the building progress and their NPS scores. The national average for NPS scores is 31.1, regarded as a good score. Remember, the NPS score ranges from -100 to 100, offering a 200-point swing. This builder’s NPS score reached 54.1, surpassing the national average by 23 points. This dramatic turnaround is largely attributable to their systematic, proactive communication approach facilitated by Builder Signal.

What Home Buyers Love

With Builder Signal, home buyers have a personalized website with all the updates and photos in one place. No more digging through emails looking for that one update or photo that was sent months ago. They also are provided with a description of what happens during each stage of construction. Proactive communication is all your customers are asking for.