| Stock Ticker |
| LivePerson | 2.85 |  | 0.18 |
| Selectica | 1.16 | | 0.07 |
| ICT | 9.15 | | 0.55 |
| Interactive | 11.01 | | 0.49 |
| SupportSoft | 3.62 | | 0.14 |
| Vignette | 12.26 | | 0.45 |
| ClickSoftware | 2.46 | | 0.07 |
| Salesforce | 69.5 | | 1.88 |
| Oracle | 23.37 | | 0.62 |
| Convergys | 13.84 | | 0.34 |
| Epicor | 7.25 | | 0.16 |
| NetSuite | 16 | | 0.3 |
| Rainmaker | 3.23 | | 0.06 |
| eLoyalty | 5.59 | | 0.07 |
| ATG | 4.17 | | 0.05 |
| Teletech | 15.99 | | 0.19 |
| Nortel | 5.99 | | 0.07 |
| Amdocs | 30.86 | | 0.36 |
| RightNow | 16.71 | | 0.17 |
| Chordiant | 6.27 | | 0.06 |
| Pegasystems | 14.89 | | 0.14 |
| CDC | 3.07 | | 0.02 |
| NCR | 26.22 | | 0.08 |
| Sykes | 19.81 | | 0.06 |
| SPSS | 33.9 | | 0.09 |
| Intervoice | 8.21 | | 0.01 |
| HP | 45.47 |  | -0.04 |
| Tekelc | 16.83 | | -0.02 |
| NICE | 28.11 | | -0.36 |
| APAC | 1.47 | | -0.02 |
| SAP | 57.45 | | -0.84 |
| Astea | 3.59 | | -0.09 |
| Unica | 8.3 | | -0.42 |
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As of 4:00 p.m. on 8/7/08 |
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CRM in Home Building: Building Good Homes and Strong Relationships
By Steve Lewkowitz, Pivotal CRM Professional Services Director, Home Building and Real Estate, CDC Software
Developing strong relationships and delivering superior customer experiences are important to success in any industry. But in home building, where the products sold usually represent the largest purchase their buyers will ever make, this is especially critical.
While the real estate market has been hot for several years, it has cooled over the last several months due to rising interest rates, general market saturation, and real wages not keeping pace with rising home prices. This slowdown is forcing home builders to look for new strategies and tools to address a more challenging market.
Traditionally slow to adopt new technologies, home builders are nonetheless warming to the idea that technology can help them lower costs and refine processes. Many are turning to customer relationship management software to help them reach more prospective home buyers, manage the sales process more efficiently, and provide consistent customer service cost effectively. With fewer homebuyers in the market for a new home, builders are recognizing they can’t leave these critical processes to chance. But builders also recognize that they have needs that are unique to their industry, and they don’t want to have to customize a system heavily to fit their processes. Many are finding a good fit in “verticalized” CRM systems that come pre-tailored to home building.
With the majority of homebuyers researching their home purchases online, both through builder websites and broader home-hunting portals, builders need to be able to capture and manage online leads reliably. Therefore, builder-focused CRM systems need to have robust online marketing and lead management features, with the ability to gather leads from own and third-party websites. Just as important is ensuring leads don’t go cold waiting for a response, since prospects are more likely to choose the company that contacts them first after they request information. Automating the follow-up process ensures immediate contact and offers a cost-effective way to send out marketing collateral such as brochures, while automatically and immediately routing hot leads to the right salesperson for more in-depth follow-up.
Fostering relationships is especially important to home builders due to the lengthy sales cycle for homes, which can last nine to 12 months. Given the size of the purchase, homebuyers need to feel comfortable not only with their sales representative, but also with their end-to-end experience with the builder. Using CRM to implement methodical sales action plans ensures regular, consistent contact with the homebuyer, building confidence and moving the relationship steadily toward a purchase. For prospects that are many months or even years from a purchase, the same automated marketing features used for initial responses can be used to inexpensively nurture prospects with automated communications flows until they’re closer to a purchase, allowing salespeople to focus on the buyers with more immediate sales potential.
Using a builder-focused CRM system allows builders to capture specific kinds of information about prospects, such as their hobbies, whether they have school-age children, who their realtor is, contact-method preferences, desired communities and amenities, preferred plans and lot configurations, and more, which can then be used to position available homes to them more effectively or to create more personalized marketing materials and communications.
Managing quotes and contracts is a complex process for home builders because of all the available options and features. A CRM solution verticalized for home building takes into account all the information that needs to go into a contract, from basic information like location and release, right down to specific details about light fixtures and windows, and stores all the data in one central location. The best systems provide integration with user-friendly options-selection or “design-center” tools, allowing buyers to review all available options on their own time and create wish-lists, accelerating their options-selection appointments with the salesperson.
A good vertical CRM solution will allow additional information specific to the home building industry to be entered as well, such as final home-inspection data, and may even be able to generate the initial home-inspection template based on the contract. Having this information readily accessible removes any confusion as to the readiness of the home to be handed over to the customer. Home builders can increase their customer satisfaction by delivering a home confirmed to meet every requirement specified by the buyer.
Beyond just the immediate home sale, a home builder has to think long term as well, nurturing a relationship that can yield additional business through referrals or second-home purchases while recognizing that these may be several years down the road. Using CRM software to gather and store information centrally, builders can obtain visibility into each and every one of their customers and prospects, giving them the insight they need to cement a more personal and lasting relationship. Maintaining the relationship post-sale through ongoing communications ensures a more fluid transition from prospect to customer, rather than an abrupt cessation when the sale closes, keeping the builder front of mind with the homebuyer long after the purchase.
Providing good post-sale customer service (known in the industry as “customer care”) also goes a long way toward maintaining a reputation for excellence and a lasting customer relationship. A builder-tailored CRM system makes detailed current and historical data about the customer and home easily accessible to the customer care team, equipping them to resolve any problems faster.
Home builders may also be able to use industry-tailored CRM software to track and manage service requests and work under warranty, assigning subcontractors and recovering warranty costs where appropriate. Keeping comprehensive service records helps pinpoint potential construction issues, and some systems may even enable builders to perform root-cause analysis to get to the bottom of service issues.
For home builders, building strong relationships can be as important as building good homes, especially in a tougher market. An industry-tailored CRM solution can assist home builders in presenting a unified face and consistent experience throughout the entire customer lifecycle, helping them gain an edge in this competitive industry.
Steve Lewkowitz is Professional Services Director, Home Building and Real Estate, for CDC Software’s Pivotal CRM, a leading line of customer relationship management solutions. E-mail him at slewkowitz@cdcsoftware.com or visit www.pivotal.com/homebuilders.
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