Charlie Scott has more than 25 years of hands-on homebuilding experience, much of this in senior management positions with an award-winning, nationally recognized Midwest builder. He credits a "Voice of the Customer" firm as instrumental in his homebuilding company's strategic growth and success. Today, Charlie is an owner of that "Voice of the Customer" firm – Woodland, O’Brien & Scott – and helps North American home builders grow their own customer-centric cultures, pursue operational excellence, and increase referral sales. Charlie is an internationally known customer satisfaction expert and has presented keynote addresses in the U.S., United Kingdom and India. Charlie also authored the book, “Construction Knowledge 101” to help builder personnel in all functions understand the nature of homebuilding. He would love to hear you from you at: CharlieS@woodlandobrien.com.
Some customers can be “impossible to please” (IP), but keep in mind, when open to the public, a home building company is exposed to all personalities within the public. After all, that idiot that cut you off on the highway this morning lives somewhere! This means, on rare occasions you will sell a home to one of these IP customers....
Many experts have said that it is unreasonable for a company’s leadership to expect their employees to take better care of their customers, than the company does for the employees. There is a lot of truth in this reasoning, but in addition to customer satisfaction implications there are business operations to consider too.When the industry...
We can all relate to great leaders, but we may fail to note what makes them so. Harry Truman is quoted as saying, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Such is the case with last year’s Professional Builder Magazine’s Builder of the Year, DSLD Homes and their leader Saun Sullivan who is a prolific reader. ...
This week's installment of Charlie Scott on Customer Satisfaction in Home Building questions how new houses are delivered to customers. Admittedly this entry is a bit cryptic, and you will have to study it, but hopefully this cryptic analogy will bring some clarity to your home building company's delivery process. Clearly,...
Years ago, well after the huge productivity gains of the industrial revolution, employers still sought productivity improvement. In an effort to find these productivity gains, many studies were conducted to find causes and effects of higher productivity.The most popular study was done at Hawthorne Works between 1924-32, where researchers...
Every builder wants to have outstanding customer satisfaction, right? Our research shows that to accomplish the highest customer satisfaction builders must think outside the box, and I don’t mean the proverbial “creative box,” I mean literally outside the house box!
In our role as the “Voice of the Customer” partner for many...
Home building is an extremely complicated business and as such requires very intelligent people and systems. Think about it for a second. To build a home, over 400,000 pieces/parts and 2,000 people must be precisely coordinated to bring these pieces, parts, and labor all together at the right time in the right sequence – and often at a...
A builder would never build, merchandise, and maintain a model without staffing it, would they? Of course not - this would be abuse of an asset! The return on this asset (ROA) would be zero, zilch, nada. No competent manager would ever allow an asset to exist without some expected return on that asset, right?
Most builders...
Let me be straight - I am anti-Net Promoting Index (NPI) in the home building industry and this is why...
When I was a manager/leader/owner of a homebuilding company there was a recurring problem that I often saw (and personally committed). Too often, we would manage our company by average numbers. For example, let's say our...
I often wondered why a consulting friend of mine wrote of his miserable air travel experiences, and now I get it. The airline industry, with its product and personnel scenarios are a reasonable proxy for the homebuilding industry. How? Read on.
As a Platinum level patron, I am often “upgraded” to first class....
The American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA) announced the release of an interim procedural guide that will provide a documented, optional process to extend...
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