I am a great believer in locking in customers. Giving them an experience that is so exceptional that they have no hesitation to recommend you to friends or family and when they come to purchase next time they want to – no, they long to put you on top of their shopping list.
As long as Westbury deliver the basics well - that is build a new home, have it clean and complete on move-in day and put things right quickly and efficiently when they do occasionally go wrong - then Westbury Direct should do well. Even an exciting new service like Westbury Direct will struggle to add value if the basic values are not there in the first place.
However, I have absolutely no reason to suspect that Westbury are not capable of delivering the basics so I, for one, hope that Westbury Direct does succeed.
Westbury is considered to be one of the leaders among a growing band of homebuilders that are challenging every aspect of their business and what they offer to the market place, so I’m not surprised that Westbury is first to market with a new idea. In the 1970s we sold houses, in the 1980s we sold homes and now in the late 1990s we are facilitating a total home owning experience. One can only speculate what Westbury’s next venture will be.
At the same time it will be interesting to see if the competitors follow. Westbury Direct is, after all, just a new service. Granted it is not an easy thing to put together, but it is not unique in the world of retailing - just building. It takes some organising and a dedicated resource but nevertheless if a competitor wants to do it, then it can be done.
In other market sectors we are used to seeing competitors running around like headless chickens chasing each other’s new initiatives. For example, I remember some years ago when Ford launched Options - a new low-cost way to purchase a new car. Within six months all the major carmakers had followed suit.
Sometimes, however, a competitor takes the market by surprise and the other players seek to divert attention. When Tesco launched their loyalty card Sainsbury scoffed. But within a few months they had to follow suit to stem the loss of customers. They still ended up losing their market leading position and have been playing catch up with Tesco ever since as it has moved on into banking, insurance, internet service provision and more.
We can only speculate what the competitor reaction is going to be to Westbury Direct. Are people running up and down head office corridors shouting, “We’ve got to have an answer to this?”
Are there perhaps some marketing professionals out there quietly seething that they had the idea years ago but the board wouldn’t listen?
Or is the response more likely to be in the Sainsbury mould, that cynical gloating “it’s bound to fail - we hope it will fail - told you so” kind of attitude?
So in six months time will we, for example, have a Barratt Direct, a Wimpey Direct or a Berkeley Direct or will Westbury be left alone to steal a march on its competitors?
Of course Westbury Direct isn’t the only recent initiative to come from our homebuilders. There’s Wimpey’s Service Line offering one-call-does-all customer service support for two years and Beazer Plus promising the defect-free home and new levels of care and support.
And there is one recent initiative that almost all the big homebuilders and many of the smaller ones have put in place - out-of-hours emergency call handling and service deployment.
It’s good to see homebuilder marketing slowly but surely moving away from relying just on the basics of free carpets, part exchange and low deposit move in. Not that they’re no longer important, it’s just that increasingly they will not be enough. In 10 years’ time buying a new home will be like buying a car today. The products and services available will make what we do today seem stale.
We have Barratt Homes to thank for the last marketing revolution back in the early 1980s. Come the early years of the next century who will we look back on as the leaders of the next revolution - who will be the Tesco and who the Sainsbury?
Westbury’s direct approach
Westbury Direct sells dishwashers, garden sheds, personal loans, redundancy insurance and a lot more goods and services that have nothing to do with homebuilding - but are top priorities for almost every homebuyer. The products are being badged with the brand of Westbury Direct and offered to past, present and future buyers of Westbury homes. The name of the game is brand loyalty, Affinity partners benefit by being able to sell their wares to the homebuilder’s database of homebuyers - 15 000 strong and growing at the rate of some 5000 names a year. Buyers benefit by getting a better deal on items they want. Responses from 4000 Westbury customers in an in-depth survey provided the basis for the initial range of products and services. The company began in March by streamlining mortgage services so it now offers buyers the services of three large independent financial advisers: BP Financial Services, MPI Mortgage Solutions and Monaco Life and Pensions. Next came a garden landscaping service, using designer Mary Tapley, which is being trialled at four sites. Negotiations are under way with a bank to provide the personal loans that homebuyers might need to afford all the extras it takes to make a dream home. And homebuyers might even be paying for their purchases with a Westbury affinity Visa card. Planned additions to the service over the next two years include insurance policies to cover homes, contents and accident, sickness and redundancy, extended appliance warranties, a network of conveyancers and home furnishings. Further ahead homeowners could be extending their house or refitting their kitchen via Westbury Direct.Don’t wait - innovate
The underlying message is that consumers are increasingly being pulled along by suppliers. Consumers base their wants on what they can understand, see, feel, touch. So if your customer asks you for something unexpected the chances are that the idea has been stimulated as a result of a product or service they have been offered. I am pretty certain that Tesco’s customer didn’t ask for a loyalty card or a banking service. Tesco observed the way we live, work and consume and found new ways to offer us convenience and value. I heard someone the other day say that in his opinion PC World is the type of shop that would not have existed if it had waited for consumers to tell us what they want. PC World is full of bits and bytes, ROMs and RAMs and other terms that most of us hadn’t got the foggiest idea about, let alone a desire to own, until someone put the ideas into our heads. I believe that if you hang around waiting for your customers to tell you what they want then eventually your customers will become your competitors’ customers and where will that leave you?Source
Building Homes
Postscript
Malcolm Pitcher is a director of PCL, a consultancy specialising in marketing strategy, brand strategy, culture change, change management, marketing research and customer satisfaction monitoring. Before starting PCL, he was marketing director for Wimpey Homes and held senior posts with Volkswagen and Honda. PCL can be contacted on 01666-510813, e-mail: info@pitcherco.com
