Only about one-third of home builders survey customers regularly,
according to a recent NAHB Research Center poll of home builders. Learning facts about
customer satisfaction is so valuable and gathering the information is so simple it's a
wonder why every builder doesn't survey every customer. After all, if you don't have the
hard data and facts, how do you really know where you stand or know what to improve?
When starting a survey program be prepared for some surprising
findings. Even though it may seem that all you hear are complaints there are many things
customers really like about the homes you built for them. Even when a customer rating on
an item is not as high as expected, they are telling you what you need to know. It's sets
clear direction for improvement priorities. As time goes on, customer surveys give
feedback on progress you've made and direct you towards new opportunities for improvement.
Only the customer can tell you what they think about their
satisfaction. Put together a survey that ask them some questions. Village Builders of
Houston, Texas uses an elegantly straight forward survey approach. They list twenty-three
features in the middle column of the survey page. In the left column the customer rates
the importance of each feature from "1- not important" to "7- extremely
important". In the right column the customer rates their new home between "1-
poor" and "7- excellent". The rest of the survey goes into more detail on
specific areas of their company. The survey is sent to customers sixty days after closing.
Winchester Homes of Greenbelt, Maryland asks customers to rate
satisfaction on forty-four items in the sales process, construction process, settlement
and move-in, home quality and overall ratings. Results are tabulated and published in the
employee newsletter. It is treated as the customer's report on the builder's performance,
telling key departments how well they are doing and what needs improvement.
Any builder who surveys all of their customers will surely know
where they stand on customer satisfaction and know what needs to improve. In today's
marketplace you may need to go further. No matter how good you are, if you're not better
than the competition, you are playing catch-up whether you know it or not.
Wouldn't it be interesting to find out what home buyers think about
your competition? To Doyle Wilson Homebuilder, a single family builder in Austin, Texas,
the competition includes existing home sales, multi-family town houses and even
condominiums. Everyone who buys a home in the Austin area is surveyed about their buying
decision. The survey is nearly same as the one given to their own customers. Not only does
Doyle Wilson know where they stand with their customers, they also know their market
position relative to their competition on every element of a home buyer's decision making
process.
Do these surveys actually worth the effort? Let actions speak louder
than words. Every winner of the National Housing Quality Award surveys every customer,
often at a multiple points in the sales, build and ownership cycle. More and more builders
are surveying their customers, more often, and at increasing levels of detail. And it is
extremely rare for a builder who surveys customers to ever stop, they can't afford to.
Their customer surveys keep them on the right track-going full speed ahead.