Customer satisfaction begins (or ends) when customers compare their expectations to your performance. Because of this reality, a common refrain in the home building industry is to “under promise and over deliver.” For the most part, however, builders talk about this useful technique a good deal more than they practice it.
Searching for inconveniences to eliminate and discovering opportunities to delight home buyers yields riches in terms of customer satisfaction. Yet seldom do even the most committed professionals actively turn this concept into tangible realities. This paradox occurs each time a company improves the new home experience and company personnel give in to the temptation to tell the home buyers about the step that produced the improvement.
This is a traditional Catch-22. As soon as a company gets some delightful step solidly implemented into its procedures, employees start bragging to customers about it—effectively eliminating the new-found potential to “over deliver.” Builders are driven to this blabbing about their good intentions in part by pressure to look better than competitors and in part by pride in their work.
The irony is that builders continually raise the bar on themselves through this dynamic. The minute you tell a customer that you will do something, you have set that expectation. When the customer expects exactly what you intend to do, fulfilling your commitment merely keeps the expectation/performance equation in balance. What you really want of course is to tip this balance in your favor. To accomplish this, and put the “under promise, over deliver” principle to good use, practice keeping some secrets: Hold some good things back and allow them to surprise your customers.
Let’s examine some specific examples. Builder A tells buyers that company personnel will return phone calls within one business day. Builder B promises a return call within 15 minutes. Builder A’s staff is 96 percent successful; Builder B’s staff is 61 percent successful. Which home buyers are better satisfied? What would the result be at Builder B’s company if they too committed to returning calls within one business day and still returned 61 percent within 15 minutes?
Another example. Working in the move-up market, a Southern California builder gives buyers 50 “We’ve moved to our new ABC Home” cards that the buyers can use to notify friends and relatives of their new address—while advertising the builder at the same time. This is a thoughtful yet inexpensive step, and one that delights busy buyers.
However, seeing how pleased their home buyers were by this practical gift, the sales person began telling new buyers about it—thereby creating an expectation. When a temporary shortage of the cards occurred, three customers were disappointed at not receiving their cards when they should have. What should have been a delightful surprise became a disappointment.
