Key Objective: Providing a better customer journey and clear communications between sales, customers, the site manager and purchasing, when selecting options and choices to reduce errors and increase sales.
“The My Davidsons customer portal provides the purchasing team with a single system that provides the ability to manage the options and choices. This has reduced errors through late or poor communication, and provided a sophisticated backend office which can calculate costs and sales prices by house type. In the first 12 months of its launch, it resulted in £1.48 million profits (£1.12 million on purchaser paid extras & £360k overhead recovery on stock plots).
“It has significantly streamlined the process for all stakeholders and the user feedback has been incredibly positive.”
Gary Jarvis, Purchasing, Davidsons Developments Limited
Key Objective: Providing a better customer journey and clear communications between sales, customers, the site manager and purchasing, when selecting options and choices to reduce errors and increase sales.
Davidsons Homes is a family owned and managed company, with over three generations of experience, knowledge, and success in homebuilding. With an unwavering dedication to quality, Davidsons Homes has an unrivalled reputation as one of the country’s leading housebuilders and place makers.
Issues: When purchasing a new house off plan there are lots of decisions to make, from floor coverings and wardrobes to kitchen style and electric point finishes, the choices and options are extensive. This is especially true of a new Davidsons home, as their homes ay want their prospective customer to create a home unique to their taste, needs and preferences.
The key challenges broke down into four core areas:
• Sales Manager availability and communications
• Customer experience and expectations
• Site manager communication and bespoke plot requirements
• Purchasing frustrations managing price increases and specification changes
• Managing expectations
The sale team on a site want to help the customer select the best house type and plot based upon their unique circumstances. They are often unable to show the specific house type and plot, so this is normally demonstrated digitally. If a physical house is available, it may be that the house shown has the same internal layout but has slightly different externals. Naturally, the salesperson is knowledgeable about the house types, and specific plots on a development. However, if a prospective buyer has enquired about two or three plots, across a couple of house types, they may well get confused and have a different understanding of what they were shown.
• Clear communications
The customer journey officially starts upon placing a deposit. Upon the deposit starts a timeline driven process depending on the build stage of their chosen plot. The journey is both exciting and stressful as the buyer may have other factors to consider, like the selling of their existing home or the expiry date of a mortgage offer. Which is why the communications of the timelines specific to the plot under offer need to be clear and concise.
• Choices and options
There are lots of decisions to be made when personalising a new build home. The timing of which are linked to key stages within the build programme. E.G. Where you want extra power points needs to come before the first fix electrics. Not understanding the importance of the critical path of the choices to be made often resulted in the buyer being prompted by the sales team. The buyer then wanted to be walked through the process by the sales manager. This often added to customer frustrations, as if they were in fulltime work or not local to the development, they often found it difficult to get a convenient appointment.
• Confirmation of costs
Choices are items or finishes which are price neutral to the customer. Options are upgrades to the standard fixtures, fittings, and finishes. Options are additional sales opportunities. In making selections the customer needs to have full control of their spend, as any additional expense cannot be added to the mortgage. When in a time limited appointment, the customer needed to be informed of their additional purchase obligations, which added greater time pressure to meeting.
• Confirmation of choices and options to the site manager
Once the selections were made, they needed to be communicated to the finance department and purchasing to expedite, as well as the site manager so he could organise the personalised features within the build programme.
• Management of pricing, house types and options/choices
A key challenge of the manual nature of the customers’ options and choices selections was the delay in applying pricing increases or product specification changes. The issue was customers were issued with paper price or PDF price lists, and there could be a significant period (if buying off plan) before their orders needed to be placed. This also required the sales team to understand the plots the price increases or specification changes needed to be applied to – as this would be dependent upon the build stage, house type, etc.
Summary: The greatest challenge was the whole process was manual managed and the margin for human error was high.
Typical issues were managing customer expectations, unexpected costs of options selected, or in the worse scenario, a finished house missing a key customer selection. This was coupled with the operational challenges of managing the pricing of options, the time lag to implement a price or product specification change.
Resolution: A customer portal was scoped, it presented the information relevant to a house purchase to ensure the customer was fully aware of the selection of house type, location, and timescales. Together with a build programme-controlled timeline on the choices and options to be made, the deadline for decisions was clear. The selections could be made like shopping online, so they could be reviewed, submitted as a whole or subject to the deadlines.
Here’s how the process now works:
Upon the receipt of a deposit the house buyer receives a login to My Davidsons.
• Managing expectations
Upon accessing My Davidsons the buyer is greeted with an image of the house they have placed a deposit on
– House type showing externals
– House floor plans
– Plot location on the development
– 3D view and aspects
This avoids any confusion as the house buyer can see their house, navigate the floor plans and see the relevant options. The plot location within the development is clear, and they can select the ‘street view’ of the house in a 3D augmented visualisation of the development.
• Clear communications
Everything they need to know is set out within this customer centric portal, including a ‘social media style’ chat to communicate directly with the sales and site managers. This logs conversations and makes sure promises made are kept. It makes communication less fraught as all stakeholders can initiate or respond at a time convenient to their commitments. As communications are time stamped, it validates the time taken to respond. If personnel, or change throughout the buying journey, previous conversation threads can be picked up by the cover or new person.
• Choices and options
The choices and options are detailed as relevant to the whole house, a specified area and/or room-by-room. Making the understanding of what is applicable where easy to preview. As all costs are shown on options, there is transparency of all costs incurred.
My Davidsons is linked to the live build programme, so the deadlines are unique to the buyers’ house, choices and options. Selections approaching a deadline were highlighted, and the consequences of not making a personalised selection are clear. I.E. Standard choices are pre-selected.
• Confirmation of costs
The customer has full visibility of their additional costs.
This is outlined within a summary page, which until could be easily edited.
It works on the principle of an ecommerce shopping basket, so is intuitive.
Once submitted this confirms the selections and any additional costs.
• Confirmation of choices and options to the site manager
As the system is linked with the Build Programme, once validated the choices and options are automatically loaded into the relevant plot log. This ensures the site manager is fully aware of the bespoke elements required to complete the specific plot.
• Management of pricing, house types and options/choices
As the entire system is digital, new products, specification changes and price increases can be applied with rules to manage their implementation. These rules ensure if a house is at a specific build stage, or the customer has made their selection using the portal, their option specifications and prices are held. Whilst other houses, not sold or without specifications selected would have the changes applied.
Summary
The process has enhanced the customer journey, and removed the frustrations identified. The process has reduced the demand on the sales managers time post deposit, whist improving communication channels with the house buyer. It’s increased sales of options and reduced costly errors.