Buyers feel delighted when they first sign on the dotted line to buy a home, and delighted six months after they have moved in. But in between those two milestones comes the lengthy buying process when the quality of the housebuilder’s service can make or break its reputation.
Zurich Insurance’s Building Guarantees division has for the first time carried out a quantitative survey that concentrates on this crucial handover period, surveying 3000 buyers on their purchase experience and after-sales support. The survey has been carried out as part of Zurich’s first ever awards scheme, Customer First, which recognises the customer satisfaction and construction quality achieved by Zurich registered builders.
As part of the awards process, marketing consultant Malcolm Pitcher surveyed buyers on the handover period by questionnaire. “It is a commendable move for Zurich to have concentrated on the very area that housebuilders need to work on to improve customer care,” says Pitcher. “There is a strong correllation between the buyers’ handover experience and their overall satisfaction.”
The results show that buyers like their new homes, but that homebuilders still have a long way to go when it comes to customer service. While almost 70% of buyers were offered a demonstration tour of their home prior to taking possession, the level of information provided by the housebuilder left relatively few buyers very satisfied.
But it is at move-in day itself that housebuilders have greatest room for improvement. More than 66% of buyers said that the snags reported before moving in had not been rectified and 65% said that their housebuilder had not made them feel special.
After move-in buyers reported a variety of problems that had required remedial work, and the nature of the problems typefy the housebuilding industry’s challenge in getting the building basics right. Although more than 41% of buyers were satisfied with the standard of remedial work done, few were happy with the way that housebuilders approached the problem-solving process. Around half of buyers were dissatisfied with the feedback that they got as to when remedial work would be carried out and more than half of buyers reported that work had not been carried out in the time agreed.
Yet in spite of the hitches and glitches of the new homebuying process, the public are positive about buying new. While 40% of buyers set out to buy a new home, 54% said that they had not minded whether they bought new or second hand when they first began looking in estate agents’ windows and local newspapers. Having bought new, 61% say that they would recommend a new home to their best friend, with almost 23% declaring themselves very satisfied with their home, and almost 40% satisfied. Almost 20% of buyers said that buying brand new had been a better experience than they had expected, but just over 29% said that it had been worse. For the remaining 50% buying brand new had been pretty much the experience that they had expected.
“There’s clearly a lot for housebuilders to do but it’s not all bad news, some is encouraging. Much of it is down to communication,” says Martin Horsler, manager of Zurich Building Guarantees.
Within the overall results, of course, some individual housebuilders have fared far better than others and those that have succeeded in satisfying customers and building high quality homes will be recognised by Zurich with Customer First awards in the shape of three award groups per region: best small builder, best regional builder and best volume builder. The names of those who are setting the industry standards will be revealed in next month's Building Homes.
Source
Building Homes
