Gathering feedback from clients and improving processes is not an overnight activity — there’s no magic hack. It takes a systemised approach to decide what to ask clients, and when, as well as a robust follow-up strategy to make sure the feedback is actioned.
We asked our experts for their best advice on when to send surveys, what to include, how to boost response rates and what you should do with all that feedback.
Multiple surveys for comprehensive observations
A strategic place to start is with a survey schedule, making sure you’re collecting information multiple times throughout a client’s building journey.
“We recommend sending multiple surveys throughout the build process,” says Steph Schumer, Business Development Manager. “Make sure you’re keeping your finger on the pulse in terms of your clients’ experiences so any major issues raised can be addressed at the time instead of negatively impacting the remainder of the process.”
Client Success Manager, Emma Lord, agrees: “You don’t want to leave it ‘til the end where it may be too late to find out your client hasn’t had an enjoyable experience.”
“Surveys are best sent at the completion of large milestones where the build is typically handed on to the next division in your business”, explains Lisa Petts, Client Success Manager.
Creating your structured, milestone-based schedule
We recommend segmenting your building journey surveys to fall into the following phases:
1 Sales (Deposit received, contract signed)
“Here you can gauge how a client’s initial sales and design journey has advanced, and any initial warning signs you may need to be aware of for the rest of the build,” says Emma.
Steph advises thinking strategically around what you might ask in this initial survey: “Asking a question about sales staff directly following the sign-up process would typically give you an extremely positive response — after all, why would a client sign up and pay a deposit if they didn’t feel good about it? This initial survey may be better focussed on how prepared the client feels about what’s to come. This lets you assess how the sales team has educated the client on expectations.”
2 Pre-Construction (Colour appointment / Pre-start)
“This is a huge part of the process for clients and can be emotional and daunting. Clients often feel nervous about putting together colour selections. There are big decisions to make, and sometimes additional, unexpected costs to consider,” says Emma.
Emma says this is a crucial time to find out what clients think of your Selections process. “It’s so important to learn what clients think about your specification and inclusions, and generally what their feedback is on both your online process and face-to-face appointments.”
At the end of this phase, the feedback you gather can give your construction team an understanding of how the client’s journey has gone so far, so they are prepared accordingly.
3 Construction (Site start, During Construction, Lock-up)
Surveys can be sent once or twice during Construction, depending on the duration of your Construction phase.
“It’s important to strike the balance between checking in regularly enough so that you don’t miss any warning signs if a client is starting to become unhappy, but not annoying the client with too many requests,” says Emma. “You want to be able to address any concerns they may raise straight away.”
4 Post-Construction (Handover)
At this point, your client can give you feedback on the whole journey: customer service, expectations, timeframes, quality of construction and their general experience.
5 Six to 12 months Post-Construction (Maintenance)
After clients have had time to settle into their new home, it’s important they don’t feel forgotten.
“You can gain insight into the quality of your builds and the fixtures and fittings after they are being used on a day-to-day basis,” says Emma.
“If the maintenance period is completed too, now is a good time to garner feedback on the staff, suppliers and trades who may have attended the new home during this time.”
Assessing staff performance effectively
When you survey clients at the handover from one person or department to another, you can assess the impact — and how your staff involved in that phase of the building journey have performed.
“Waiting and doing ‘summary’ surveys of several phases can muddy the attribution of results,” warns James Salt, Constructive CEO. “You need to be assessing a department’s performance when they are about to hand it over.”
Lisa confirms, “This provides cleaner data at each stage and can reflect a higher level of impartial, individual department performance.”
“Plus, having ticked off a stage, your clients are feeling good; they are seeing progress. Even if things have been a little slow to get here, they are on a high, so make the most of that positive energy!”
So, what should you include in your surveys?
Unanimously, our in-house experts agreed surveys should be kept short and sweet to encourage clients to respond, but also provide an opportunity to expand on their experience if they wish.
James says, “It’s important to include the person’s first name in the survey when asking for feedback to make it feel personal and connected.”
“I’d recommend asking no more than three questions per survey,” suggests Steph. “You might ask a question about the staff, a question about the process and an NPS/CSAT question.”
“At the bare minimum, ask an NPS question,” advises Lizzie Mooney, Client Success Manager. “You may also like to ask for feedback on how they’ve found the process working with a particular team member in the phase they’ve just completed.”
Lisa agrees NPS and CSAT questions are important. “These are industry-standard questions that can help quantify your results, helping to make all the effort worthwhile.”
Emma reflects that sometimes we need to hold space for clients to express themselves. “Other than NPS, keep your questions open-ended so clients have the space to say what’s important to them, not just answer questions that you assume are important and may not be significant to their experience.”
We asked Emma to give us an example of what that might look like in a survey
1 Start with an NPS question
How would you rate your experience so far? (NPS score 1-10)
2 Followed by an open-ended question
Please tell us a bit more about why you gave us that score.
“Often, the most successful surveys follow this simple structure, with space for the customer to provide authentic feedback.”
Boost response rates while saving time
Your staff are busy and might unintentionally forget to send surveys at the right time, and sometimes a survey might fall off the radar altogether! Equally, clients can often forget to respond, or ‘lose’ the survey in their inbox.
With Constructive’s Customer Portal, you can automatically trigger customised surveys (integrated with your survey provider, such as Survey Monkey, Zoho, or Qualtrics) for clients to receive at the completion of certain milestones.
Clients receive your survey link in a custom-branded email, consistent with all other communications from the Customer Portal throughout their journey, which means no more juggling different clients at different milestones and manually sending out surveys.
“When a task is completed, the survey will be active on the Portal for your client, as well as the email they receive prompting them to fill it out,” explains Lizzie.
“Any outstanding surveys form part of the daily Activity Email clients receive, so they’ll be reminded. And they can always return to the Portal later to take the survey if that’s more convenient, it’s right there for them as part of the ‘self-serve’ functionality. They’re not contacting your staff to manually re-send the link.”
“Constructive gently nudges clients to complete outstanding surveys by highlighting it on their Portal dashboard, too,” says Lisa.
The reminder prompts may drive higher response rates for your surveys.
Survey automation is customisable, too. “We can automate by progress completion, number of days after an event, number of days before an event, or even after a document has been uploaded,” says James.
Processing survey feedback
Acknowledgment
“Acknowledge all responses, good and bad, and speak openly about your survey process with clients” advises Emma. “You don’t want to encourage a culture where surveys are only completed for negative reasons, so acknowledging positive responses from your clients and thanking them for their time, personally, goes a long way.”
Take Action
“It’s a lost cause if you collect all this valuable information and don’t follow through with meaningful actions,” warns Lisa. “Your NPS question will highlight — quickly and easily — who your Promoters and Detractors are. Thank your Promoters and encourage them to leave an online review. Contact your Detractors as soon as possible and address any concerns they may have before they leave negative reviews online!”
“Individual responses can be automatically emailed to your Operations team to assess whether immediate action is required,” says James. “You can set these to be conditionally sent based on NPS score.”
Steph believes Constructive’s Intelligence platform should be used to drill down to individual Detractor responses. “I strongly encourage department managers to follow up directly with clients to address their concerns. This will, in turn, encourage the client to continue to provide feedback through the remainder of the process, making them feel seen and heard, and boosting that response rate!”
Evaluate NPS and identify how to improve
“You should undertake a quarterly statistical review of trends at a senior management level,” advises James.
“Through the use of Constructive’s Intelligence product, you can start to review these trends via your NPS results, discovering where issues may be stemming from and identify and reward those who are consistently going above and beyond,” says Lisa.
Actionable dashboards can be accessed directly through Intelligence, and data can be analysed to look for additional process improvements based on clients’ feedback.
“We can store your NPS data,” says Emma, “so you can see — anonymously — via Intelligence how your NPS ranks in relation to other builders using Constructive. You can map your competitive position and benchmark your online engagement to start setting goals and identifying opportunities.”
Monitor KPIs
“Staff KPIs can be set, and monitored, through specific survey questions around Customer Service,” says Steph.
Celebrate successes
Grant your marketing team access to all the positive feedback to use for their materials.
Share exceptional feedback with your staff, so they understand their efforts don’t go unnoticed.
“It’s important to acknowledge operational staff, too, for example, a Draftsperson may never meet a client, but if the client is really happy, chances are the accuracy of the drawings played a part in their smooth building journey,” says Emma.
“And share positive feedback on Social Media – with your clients’ permission!”
Steph agrees. “Impressive feedback should be celebrated – a win for a staff member is a win for the whole company!”
Connect with your customers. Increase survey response rates with automation through Constructive Customer Portal.
