During his IBS 2022 education session “From Sales to Completion: Winning the Customer Expectations Game” on Feb. 8 in Orlando, Florida, Tim Faller of Remodelers Advantage will discuss the importance of managing and meeting customer expectations during a job. The session will also cover common challenges to a great customer experience and the relationship between how customers feel and the success of a job.
To preview the session, BUILDER spoke with Faller to discuss the basics of customer experience, why it should be important to builders, and why it is often overlooked.
BUILDER: How do you define the difference between customer experience and customer service?
Faller: The customer experience is what they feel. Customer service is what we as a company do for the customer. I think there’s a huge difference. In general, we focus on what we do and not what the customer experiences or how they feel.
BUILDER: Why is how the customer feels such an important element that all construction professionals should be thinking about in their business?
Faller: The customer reacts based on their feelings, not based on delivery of a product. If we don’t give them a great experience, then reviews are difficult as well as referrals. I think the other thing that is important, particularly from a production standpoint, is the client could have an incredible experience during the sales process that is incredibly positive. Then they get into production, and it tends to be problem-oriented and challenging. So the experience deteriorates over time.
BUILDER: What can companies do to ensure all employees maintain customer experience throughout the different processes of a job?
Faller: Companies can be aware and concerned about the customer’s experience. But probably a more important factor is just communicating about it. I think we tend to communicate about all the technical stuff, but don’t communicate about expectations and experience.
BUILDER: Once a company is aware of the customer experience as a major part of their business, can it be managed and monitored?
Faller: It’s very possible. You just have to really pay attention and really make a point of doing the same types of things on each job. Particularly for the production staff, building the project becomes the most important thing for them while they’re working, and it’s not.
BUILDER: What are some common areas that threaten a good customer experience that impact customer expectations?
Faller: The biggest one is the view of the production team toward getting the project done. That seems to be their general focus [rather than the customer]. I think the other thing that is often a big challenge is the process of building a project is so commonplace to builders that we take for granted that it’s going to be a certain way. As opposed to saying we need to create an environment that the client will enjoy. In other words, we just do it the way we’ve always done it and don’t think about creating a different way. So you listen to people talk, and everybody will say, “There’s going to be problems.” How do you know that? How does that impact how the customer feels?
To learn actionable takeaways that can be applied at every step of the job process to positively impact the customer experience, attend Faller’s session “From Sales to Completion: Winning the Customer Expectations Game” at 11:15 AM EST on Tuesday, Feb. 8, in room W304-G.
