Jason Forrest

At a time when locating home buyers is still a challenge, builders are placing more emphasis on turning their existing customers into advocates for their products and communities, customer service expert Jason Forrest tells BIG BUILDER. What’s the No. 1 misconception builders have about customer satisfaction?
Builders focus too much on the behaviors of customer care and not enough on the beliefs that lead to genuinely caring for customers. How we treat the customers is based on how we treat employees. If you can create an internal brand of trust, accountability, and leadership at your company, then people end up providing exceptional customer care without being asked.

The biggest myth is that the customer is always right. I say this because by agreeing with everything a customer asks, a builder actually contributes to the customer’s uncertainty, rather than leading them through the process in a way that shows we know better than they do. Saying something like, “Yes, I can see how you would say that, and if I were in charge here, we would do things differently,” doesn’t come from bad intentions, but it ends up creating a relationship based on distrust. It may make the customer wonder, “Well, if this employee doesn’t agree with this, then what else do they disagree with?” Instead, the customer needs to hear why it is a good decision and why it does make sense.

How do you build customers’ trust?
The challenge is to teach the right beliefs to anyone at the company who interacts with the customer. From construction to financing and everything in between, train employees to be assertive and confident in their dealings with clients. Train employees not just on behaviors, but on beliefs and the whys. If the organization is not a team and there’s no sincerity in employees’ interactions with buyers, the customer will see through it every time.

Jason Forrest is chief sales officer of Forrest Performance Group in Fort Worth, Texas.