What, in your experience, annoys a new homebuyer more than anything?

Homebuyers become annoyed and extremely anxious when they are (1) not kept informed about construction status and delays, and (2) when the builder does not meet promises made about customer service response, product quality, or home delivery timing. Our solution—which has worked extremely well to reduce anxiety and raise survey scores and referral rates—is to (1) establish a systematic process for contacting buyers proactively with status reports, and (2) train builders to only promise that which can be EXCEEDED 95% of the time.

What are some of the other critical areas where homebuilders are dropping the ball during the homebuying experience?

Builders too often feel their primary objective is to simply build a wonderfully designed home with great quality and—when this has been accomplished—these homebuyers will be happy and refer their friends. Buyers buy due to the design, price, lot size, promised quality, location, etc., but they REFER based on the experience delivered. Buyer loyalty and future referrals are the result of delivering a WOW experience to the buyer.

Describe the repercussions for those homebuilders:

Builders who fail to produce a great purchase and ownership experience will INEVITABLY see fewer referral sales, higher can rates, higher selling costs, higher warranty costs, higher insurance premiums, and higher litigation costs.

As a clinically trained psychologist, you were among the first to take a more scientific approach to customer satisfaction in the homebuilding industry. Can you describe what you call "Priority Insights"?

That is an old term, not used any more. We now talk about "Referral Drivers" which are those builder behaviors which—when performed well—will significantly impact the buyer's willingness to refer a friend. We have identified these 'drivers' in each phase of the home buying experience, from sales to design center to customer service.

How else does your company help turn things around for builders in terms of increasing customer satisfaction?

Based on 23 years of providing this service to over 500 home builders, our program has two elements: (1) We survey all of our builder client's buyers several times during the year after the purchase. The reports from these surveys are e-mailed to each builder's managers and trades every day, week, and month. (2) We offer training and consulting to those builders wishing to accelerate their progress towards stronger referral sales from delighted homeowners.

During the current slowdown in housing, have you found that customer satisfaction among new homebuyers has increased or decreased?

We are not allowing our clients to ease up on customer satisfaction initiatives during this difficult period. This is the time to spend extra effort in cultivating referral sales from absolutely delighted homeowners! We are preparing for the coming upturn in the market!

Which homebuilder, in your opinion, is doing the best job in customer satisfaction?

John Laing Homes has been the best or one of the very best for a long time, almost 15 years (we started working with this builder about 20 years ago, when they were next to last on our ranking lists.)

Your website touches upon how homebuilders can set and manage new homebuyers' expectations—raising satisfaction in the process. Can you give an example of this?

In a misguided effort to increase sales, we too often feel that we need to exaggerate, to embellish, to promise more than we know we can produce. We promise 'the highest quality', 'immediate service' 'zero item walk throughs', 'zero defect' homes, floors that don't squeak. We think we can impress with our promises, but the truth is we can only impress with our actions. Delighted customers are the result of exceeding our promises...if we promise perfection, how can we exceed that? So, we should promise that "...move-in day will probably yield several issues that were missed in the final walk-through, but we will repair these within 20 days after move-in." (We say 20 days because we are 95% certain that we can do this in only 10 days...our goal is always to enhance the experience by under-promising and over-delivering).

What was the most surprising thing told to you by a new homebuyer in one of your focus groups?

I once asked a focus group of recent home owners what their builder could do to improve their homes. One woman said "Buy a set of legos and practice, practice, practice..."

Do you feel that homes today are better built than twenty years ago?

What I think doesn't matter, but based on over 400,000 homebuyer surveys a year, today's buyers are MUCH happier with the quality of their homes than previous buyers. Our buyers' ratings of new home quality and service are significantly higher today than 10-20 years ago.

What item/feature in the home generates the most complaints?

Poor quality paint.

Can you offer your top 3 tips to builders on how to increase customer satisfaction literally overnight?

1. Pro-active communication
2. Right-the-first-time customer service
3. Make REALISTIC promises that you can beat 95% of the time.

Any psychological sales pointers for the sales reps working on-site at new model homes?

See #1 above…

For more information on Eliant, please visit: http://www.eliant.com

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