In the August 2011 issue of Professional Builder, customer-satisfaction expert Charlie Scott of Woodland, O'Brien and Scott writes about the great disparity in customer satisfaction ratings between spec-home buyers and those that purchased "to-be-built" homes. In short, spec-home customers are much less satisfied (find out why this is the case).
Scott offers four tips for driving referrals from your inventory home buyers.
- Determine how much customer relationship time you have allocated in your home-building process. Develop strategies to maximize this relationship and educational time investment for both to-be-built and completed-inventory customers.
- Get rid of the buyer double-standard. Shift the company attitude to building communities and serving customers equally, regardless of the stage at which the home is purchased.
- Take a close look at the words and pronouns you use to describe your homes and customers.
- Treat all customers as to-be-built customers by purposefully building both a good home and a relationship. Doing so will unquestionably improve your overall customer willingness to refer, customer enthusiasm, referring activity, and referral sales. Plus, isn’t it simply the right thing to do?
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