Buying your first home is one of the biggest landmarks of adult life. And yet for many, it’s becoming harder and harder to find – and ultimately move into – an affordable property.

One reason is a simple lack of supply. It’s estimated that the UK needs 300,000 new affordable homes every year. Another is the fact that many housing providers still rely on slow, complex processes. Data is handled manually across disparate systems, resulting in lost time, frustrated employees and disjointed customer service.

Why is the housing industry lagging so far behind many others? And what changes can housing providers make to delight customers, while accelerating the planning and construction of their homes?

Our new e-book, Houseforce: Helping Residential Developers Build Better Customer Connections, answers these questions, as well as highlighting some of the challenges UK housing providers face today. 

Disconnect and disruption

In an industry as socially important as housing, there’s huge pressure to deliver efficient buildings and services. 

What’s more, we’re now firmly in the age of the connected customer. Tenants, owner-occupiers, landlords, or investment buyers – they all expect an informed, connected and personalised service. 

Did you know 81% of consumers want companies to understand them better and know when and when not to approach them? – Accenture 

While most companies in the housing sector have apps and an online presence, the processes at the heart of their business often remain complex, manual and disconnected. 

All this makes the UK housing industry a prime candidate for digital disruption – creating a massive opportunity for housing providers to embrace modern technology and rebuild their business around customer needs.

Three steps to seizing the initiative

For traditional home builders, manufacturing-led firms such as Legal & General already represent a new era of competition. By using modern methods of construction (MMC), they can build bespoke, digitally designed homes at an attractive price point, fast.  

While traditional builders may not be able to compete on the same level overnight, embracing customer-centric digital transformation can help them to even the odds in a number of ways. Let’s run through a few of them.

#1. Support the customer journey like never before

A single sale may involve hundreds of buyer interactions. To deliver standout customer experiences, it’s vital that builders capture and track actionable data from every one of them: website visits, brochure requests, development visits – you name it.

By capturing data from every touchpoint in a single, secure 360-degree customer record, you can share that data with the right people – anytime, anywhere and on any device – to help: 

• Accelerate decisions: Help salespeople score individual leads, track customers’ likelihood to buy, flag follow-up actions and capture digital signatures.
• Connect operations: Help regional and national sales managers to monitor and manage activity across all development sites, including team productivity, engagement and collaboration.
• Build partnerships: Help builders recommend related products and services to customers – directing business to trusted insurance, home entertainment and furniture partners.

#2. Use your insights to build better communities

When a resident moves into a new build, that shouldn’t mark the end of customer engagement.

There’s the immediate post-occupancy support. But there’s also the measures that builders can put in place to foster a sense of community – from facilities such as gyms, parking and gardens, to services like security, grounds maintenance and on-demand web services.

When residents interact with such infrastructure and services, they’re continuing their customer journey. It’s important for housing providers to capture these interactions too, so they can keep customers happy and engaged with their brand long after they’ve picked up their keys.

#3. Construct smarter homes from the start

From our televisions, to our thermostats, to our watches – ‘smart’ consumer technology is everywhere. And as we’re increasingly seeing in luxury markets, these smart technologies can be scaled across properties to create the aptly named ‘smart home’.

Enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT), ‘smart homes’ incorporate the likes of smart meters and sensors to help residents achieve a more convenient and controlled domestic environment – all managed from a remote smartphone app for anytime, anywhere control.

And thanks to integrated self-diagnostic tools, these technologies can even predict a need for repair or maintenance before the problem worsens, helping you to offer truly proactive customer service.

Build better connections

Transforming any business to take advantage of the latest technology can be daunting. But the UK’s housing providers won’t have to do it alone. There are plenty of experienced technology partners who can help you on your journey.

From enabling continuous customer services that transcend the traditional buyer’s journey, to digitalising your processes for a more seamless, customer-centric business model – the opportunities are out there, and so is the tech that can make it happen.

To put the final pieces into place, read the full eBook, ‘Houseforce: Helping Residential Developers Build Better Customer Connections’