Cardiff shows satisfaction sells

A standard of service equal to the best high street stores would prompt 90% of new homebuyers to recommend their homebuilder to their friends and family, according to a survey of new homebuyers carried out by marketing consultant Malcolm Pitcher for Cardiff Bay Development Corporation and sponsored by the NHBC.

Keeping the buyer informed of the legal completion date, explaining the warranty, demonstrating how a new home works, and making it easy for buyers to report teething problems are all features of customer service that will make buyers feel so positive about a homebuilder that they will recommend it to others.

“There is an incredibly strong correlation between service and the willingness of customers to refer,” said Pitcher. “If any homebuilder out there is not consistently measuring customer satisfaction, then they should be thinking of doing it, because their customers could be writing their business plans for them.”

John Woodland of US customer satisfaction monitoring consultant Woodland O’Brien will back up the UK survey’s findings with hard evidence showing exactly how referrals convert to sales at a one-day conference in October*.

The Cardiff Bay survey questioned 128 occupier-buyers of mainly new apartments within Cardiff Bay Development Corporation’s catchment area. Building Homes understands that those surveyed had bought homes from either Barratt, Beaufort/St Davids, McLean, Westbury or Wimpey Homes.

Buyers were questioned on their homebuilders’ performance prior to legal completion and after move-in. They were also asked about move-in day, the condition of their new home, any problems requiring remedial work, and the tidiness of the development as a whole. Homebuilders’ performance was scored from 0 to 100, with 85+ being equivalent to the best standards in the retail sector.

The top scoring homebuilder consistently outperformed its rivals, attaining an average score of more than 90 with 90% of buyers happy to refer it.

“In my experience that often occurs where there is an exceptional site with a good site manager and a good sales representative that work well together as a team,” said Pitcher.

But there were huge discrepancies between the best and the worst, with the poorest performing homebuilder having an average score of 50. Surprisingly, the homebuilder with the highest proportion of zero-defect homes emerged from the survey with one of the lowest referral rates, because it was judged to have provided a poor after sales service on the few homes that did have problems.

The NHBC has used the survey to test its own customer care code of practice, which it will issue later this year. “We are aware from the claims and resolutions process that most problems with a new home occur in the first two years, and good customer care could prevent many of these,” said an NHBC spokeswoman.

That view was endorsed by Pitcher. “In the survey builders who were worse at the hygiene things, like explaining the warranty, seemed to do worse elsewhere. If a homebuilder explains the warranty, then if there is a problem it can deliver to something that the buyer understands.”