Productive Production

With hope, your sales process has not only converted a prospect to a client but also has built a solid foundation for a good working relationship between your company and that client. Sales may be ongoing in terms of change orders and upgrades, but the heavy lifting has been done by the time production takes over. Now it's up to those in the field to maintain and continue building strong customer relations to ensure that clients have a good experience and, ultimately, become fans who will refer your company to others.

Part two of this series on engineering the customer experience focuses on production — on what makes and keeps clients happy as their homes and lives are turned upside down during a remodel.

Photo Credit: Illustration: John Still

The Schick family's whole-house remodeling project began in May 2007 and includes a 2,500-square-foot below-ground addition to a circa-1932 hillside home overlooking the San Diego harbor. It took three months just to remove the soil from beneath the house. The Schicks became remodeling refugees, first renting a place elsewhere; now in their home, moving from room to room while the project continues. Work is not expected to end until June of this year. How is it possible that homeowner Patty Schick is still smiling?

“We're five months ahead of schedule. We have a fabulous crew. They are here every day at 7 and leave at 4. When they leave, the place is cleaned up. On Monday mornings they prepare us for what the week will be like. They move furniture for us and put things in storage. They know how hard it is to live through this and are really good about forewarning us,” Schick says.

In fact, VanBerg Construction took four months to develop a quote before handing the Schicks a 17-page bid that included every phase, and its cost and payment schedule. “When we signed on the dotted line,” Schick says, “there was no question about what happens when and what's due when. We talked about possible change orders and knew before we started where we would have to be worried, especially in the beginning phases.”

The issues Schick describes are familiar to Geoffrey Graham, who, as founder and CEO of the Atlanta-based customer survey company GuildQuality, has spent years asking building and remodeling clients about their experiences. “The most important thing for homeowners is schedule,” says Graham, followed by punch list and communication. “There might be delays,” he says, “but if a remodeler communicates [about those delays] in a way that a customer appreciates and understands, overwhelmingly the customer is happy.” And those happy customers will recommend their remodeler.

GuildQuality data, culled from 40,000 surveys received from remodeling and home-building customers each year (approximately 7,000 of those are from remodeling customers), show a high correlation between future recommendation and scores in scheduling, punch list, and communication. “A customer might give high rankings in value, or in construction quality, or staying within the budget, or being innovative,” Graham says, “but they won't necessarily recommend [their remodeler].” He also notes the correlation between profitability and high rankings in scheduling, punch list, and communication. “If a remodeling company regularly struggles in those areas, they aren't as profitable as those people who have those things down pat,” he says.

GuildQuality surveys by mail, telephone, and e-mail, and has a return rate of 72%. One might think that disgruntled customers would respond more readily — as judged by the number of angry posters prowling Web chat rooms or publicly reciting their tales of remodeling misery. But, says Graham, “The happiest customers are most eager to give their feedback. Unhappy customers are tired of their relationship with their remodeler and don't want to invest any more time in them. They also understand that any feedback they give you is for your benefit. It's a warning sign for [remodelers using our services] if they only have a 50% response rate.”

You have to be proactive and create clear expectations with clients so that frustration doesn't set in. A simple example is letting clients know that no one will be on the jobsite on a particular day, rather than letting them wonder where everyone is and eventually calling in anger.

“About 90% of communication from clients to production managers is about a problem,” says Tim Faller, a consultant and the owner of Field Training Services, in Westerly, R.I. — and a regular contributor to REMODELING. “So production managers may not even want to call a client because they're afraid the conversation will turn to negative things.” Rather than flee this sort of confrontation, they must have it as a priority and deal with it before it happens. “This will eliminate negative phone calls,” Faller says.

Part one of series: Sell It Like It Is

Dan Weidmann, owner of Weidmann & Associates, in Alpharetta, Ga., discusses client expectations at the pre-construction meeting. “Clients are concerned with how often someone will be on the job, how communication will be handled, and how they will live during the project,” Weidmann says. He reviews a pre-construction checklist with them, and gives them a three-ring job binder and a laminated business card with company contact numbers, including his. Although the project manager is the main contact, Weidmann knows that clients feel better having his number on hand. Clients are also given a day-by-day project schedule.

Jeff and Bob Jertberg, owners of VanBerg Construction (the company working on the Schick project), also establish communication patterns early. They create a binder full of pertinent information for the project manager before the pre-construction meeting. The project manager reviews the binder with the salesperson. A week before the project begins, at the pre-construction meeting with the client, “there's a psychic and physical handoff from sales to production,” Jeff says. The client feels part of the process, that they've been in good hands and will continue to be in good hands.

To put his clients at ease, John DeCiantis, owner of DeCiantis Construction, in Stonington, Conn., gives clients a humorous booklet on how to survive their remodeling project. He also goes over a graph called “the emotional state of the homeowner.” “They're a little surprised at first,” he says, “but they soon get it.”

A calender is a great visual tool that's at the crossroads of communication and scheduling. “Create and share a schedule with clients,” Faller says. “A schedule shows clients that you know the job and have control. It gives them hope of a date the project can realistically be done and shows them there's a degree of professionalism going into the project.”

Regularly scheduled jobsite meetings are an important way to keep clients informed about schedule changes as well as “what's happening on the job, who will be there, any difficulties, and pending change orders,” Faller adds.

Although scheduling and communication are important, Faller would add cleanliness to the list. “I might even go so far as to say that the quality of your workmanship may not be as important as the cleanliness at the jobsite.” But although remodelers interviewed for this article all mentioned “clean jobsite” as a way of creating a great experience for the customer, that issue ranks among the lowest on GuildQuality's 13-question survey. “Even unhappy customers still rated cleanliness very high,” Graham says. He says it's because remodelers using his service “are a notch above the rest” and keep jobsites clean; hence, it's not seen as an issue.

There are easy things remodelers can do to minimize dust and debris, says Brindley Byrd, president of Qx2, Inc., a consulting and training company for the construction industry that focuses on helping companies manage particulate hazards present on jobsites.

The main objective should be to keep sites “clean enough for a 3-year-old,” Byrd says. “If a child walked onto a jobsite, [they] shouldn't be put into an overly hazardous situation. That's how neat and orderly the site should be.” (Visit www.remodelingmag.com/webextras for Byrd's 10 suggestions on how to accomplish this.)

VanBerg Construction makes job-site cleanliness a priority. “We go over the top on isolation,” Bob Jertberg says. “We build wood frame plywood isolation walls with spray-foam seams. We create as strong a dust barrier as possible. We have locking doors to create a sense of security as well as a sense of cleanliness. It has a huge impact.”

DeCiantis uses a product called ZipWall (www.protectiveproducts.com), a spring-loaded pole that connects to plastic sheeting. “With it we can create a protective barrier in 15 minutes,” says DeCiantis, whose crew also does a 100% dust-free remodel using negative pressure, air filters, and dust walls.

It's not enough that the company owner communicate with the homeowner. The staff must also communicate the company mission to clients. “You need to get employees to see it as an important function of the jobsite,” Faller says. Employees must buy into the process to give clients the best experience.

Linda Gridley, owner of Gridley Co., in Campbell, Calif., has most trades done by in-house employees rather than by “specialty contractors,” her term for trade partners. “The client care is higher,” she says. Employees have a larger stake in the project and Gridley reinforces her house rules in weekly production meetings. She even brings up the delicate subject of bathroom cleanliness, or “spin art,” as her staff jokingly call it. (GuildQuality's Graham agrees that this is a topic he often hears about from homeowners.)

Faller suggests that role-playing might be a way for employees to learn company rules about communicating with clients. “[Review] calls from clients about bad situations. Talk with the project manager and the crew and ask them what could have been done to avoid the issue.” Then practice it.

Lead carpenters and project managers can learn to recognize situations that might lead to conflict. For example, Faller says, “If a client says, ‘I'm thinking of a change,' and the lead says, ‘That'll be really easy,' and the change order comes in at $8,000, the client might get upset. Instead, the lead should say, ‘That's possible for us to do, but it will add costs to the project and change the schedule.' That kind of answer changes the client's expectations.” Or telling a client that a trade partner will be there at 9:00 Monday morning sets up an expectation that might be outside the lead's control. “Be vague,” Faller says. “Say, ‘We'll rough in plumbing some time next week between Monday and Thursday.'” This scenario might be frustrating for the carpenter, but the alternative is frustrating for the client because they're left wondering who's controlling the process.

It's one thing to recognize the issues and put some systems in place, but unless you can develop a wider customer focus that permeates every decision, you won't successfully create customers for life. That's where customer relationship management — CRM — is helpful. Small businesses, in comparison to large corporations, can really shine in this area.

Jim Benson, owner of Benson Builders, in Virginia Beach, Va., says that his business is customer-centric. He surveys clients weekly. If something doesn't measure up, he says, “We address [it] quickly so the client doesn't get frustrated. Our focus and goal is that when all is said and done, clients have had a good experience. Every decision we make we ask ourselves, ‘Is this going to result in a good building experience for the client?' If that's the goal, everything else should be in line with that.”

There are plenty of CRM tools to help you gather and maintain information about your clients so you can offer them the service they're looking for. Yet, GuildQuality's Graham says he's “astounded at how many of our new customers are interested in customer satisfaction surveys but aren't able to get their hands on their lists of customers.”

GuildQuality has found that remodelers who keep poor customer contact records often don't do a good job communicating, and have a lower response rate, and unhappy customers. “There are so many great software resources out there such as ACT! and SalesForce.com that make it simple. It's criminal not to have all that information at your fingertips; it results in a positive outcome for the customer and simplifies things for the remodeler.”

Developing a CRM program is a good start to establishing clarity for your own business' focus. You'll minimize stress, be more efficient, and differentiate your company from others. “Fill up the dog's water bowl if it's empty. Engage the kids for a few minutes. When the clients are at the weary stage, send them out for dinner,” Benson says. “Do the things that make a difference.”