Quality thinking, quality design, quality marketing. Many other industries at this level would be riding the crest of a wave - but we're not. Press and public still give us a very cold shoulder and I'm sorry to say they will continue to do so until we add one more quality - the quality of customer experience.
Over the next few months I would like to share with you some of the experiences I have had both within and outside of the industry, things that seem to have made a difference to the quality of customer experience and things that have not. Starting this month at the top with leadership and vision.
Leadership, vision and the quality customer experience
In housebuilding as in other retailers it's the people at the sharp end who will ultimately deliver a quality customer experience. These people obtain their lead from the top.
If you believe, then they will believe.
But if you don't, if you appear to pay lip service to the customer experience, then no amount of training, conference speeches, nice words in brochures or warm words to the shareholders will really help you deliver it.
Buzz Hoffman who runs Lakewood Homes in Chicago builds 1200 units per year and has experienced 92% customer willingness to refer and 30%+ referral sales every quarter for six and a half years. His motto? A fish stinks from the head. If you're not seen to be committed then those around you will also not be committed.
Consider also that a new vision has to last longer, a lot longer, than the initial launch phase. In one car company the top management introduced a customer care scheme that involved launches and staff training over a six-month period at a cost of millions.
Everyone was very motivated by the whole experience, people began to use the jargon introduced at the course. It was a great place to be - for a while. Then just as quickly as it was launched so it disappeared. It became one of those infamous flavours of the month. Every flavour of the month initiative is one more nail already in the coffin of the next new initiative.
Why did it fail? Because the top team felt it had done its bit and it was now busying itself on something else. This "We've done our bit, it's now down to the troops" thinking has destroyed many a great quality customer experience initiative. So walk the talk - always. And if commercial circumstances put your vision under pressure (we all face year end challenges) share your concerns with all your staff - a committed and understanding team is much less likely to let you down than the cynical team that thinks "here we go, it's year end. Get the punters in and sod the consequences time again".
By the way, top team to me means anyone who is seen as a leader by an employee, be it chief exec, MD, divisional head, regional director, department manager or supervisor. Each and every leader at whatever level should walk the talk.
Setting the vision for a quality customer experience
As one housebuilder once said to me: "Vision is one thing, delivery is quite another".
It is at the top of the company where the vision for the future and for the quality customer experience should ultimately be decided. But a vision is worthless unless your employees understand it, they are capable of delivering it and they know exactly when they have delivered it.
Take this vision: To deliver homes with no defects and have 95% customer satisfaction.
This will likely tie your company up in knots, demotivate your employees, set department against department and actually result in you going backwards if any of these conditions exists:
- you do not define exactly what "no defects" means;
- nobody understands how you measure customer satisfaction;
- you don't exactly know where you are coming from;
- you do not give measurable time/delivery targets;
- it is considered by your staff to be unachievable;
- you appear to change your mind at year-end; and
- one of your senior members of staff contradicts the vision in front of employees.
To me the finest vision statement of all time was this: "that this Nation should commit itself to achieve the goal before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth" This statement has been described as clear, compelling and serving as a unifying point of effort - creating immense team spirit, with a clear finish line so that the organisation knows when it has achieved the goal. How does it compare to your vision statement?
The Housing Forum survey in an era of behavioural transparency
The Housing Forum Customer Satisfaction Survey results for last year did indeed portray an industry with a huge quality customer experience debt. Let me take three key statistics from the survey as an illustration: 87% satisfied with the new homeYou would expect a high score for this question. After all you’re asking customers to judge the product that they mortgaged their lives to the hilt to buy from you. They’re hardly likely to admit that they made a bum decision. Even so the result is nothing to get excited about. Turn the figures around a bit to see a different view. Almost one in seven customers is not satisfied with the product they purchased. That doesn’t sound so hot to me. And if you agree with the statement that a dissatisfied customer tells 10 while a satisfied customer tells one then the maths don’t look at all good. What we are saying is that for every 100 housebuyers. 130 people (13 times 10) receive bad news about the new home and only 87 people receive good news. 70% satisfied with the service received
This means that for every 100 customers 300 people receive bad news about service while just 70 receive good news. 52% would recommend a new home to friends
A major retail industry in this country sells a product that only half of its customers would recommend to a friend. Whoa! The maths here are pretty horrendous. What’s even more worrying is that the 1:10 ratio is going to become old hat. In his recent book, Brand Storm, author Will Murray talks of behavioural transparency. Since the 1960s behavioural transparency has been a way of life for political and public figures - screw up in private and be hounded in public! The internet is empowering the consumer to demand transparency from companies that supply them. No need to write to the papers or call your MP; get on the internet and get it out there. One in 10 suddenly becomes one in millions. How long before no one is prepared to mortgage their lives to the hilt without first visiting a website at which homeowners provide information about their own experiences? The Housing Forum survey suggests that there are far too many bad stories waiting to be told.
Source
Building Homes
Postscript
Malcolm Pitcher is a director of PCL and In-house Research. He specialises in marketing strategy, brand strategy, culture change, change management, marketing research and customer satisfaction monitoring. He has been marketing director for Wimpey Homes and held senior posts with Volkswagen and Honda. He can be contacted on 01793 848455, e-mail: info@pitcherco.com
