As a residential home builder, effectively educating your clients throughout the construction process is crucial for success. Constructive Software offers a suite of powerful tools designed especially for builders to enhance client communication and understanding. Let’s explore leveraging these features to create a comprehensive and engaging client experience.
Take a multi-faceted approach
Before diving into specific features, it’s important to understand that clients have diverse preferences when it comes to receiving information. Some prefer quick updates; others appreciate detailed explanations and some proactively seek information.
Constructive Client Success Manager, Emma Lord, advises, “It’s best to utilise a combination of all the features in the Customer Portal, because all clients are different. Some prefer quick updates such as, ‘A milestone is complete’ and others prefer a brief description in the Progress Template timeline. Others still will prefer a more detailed and lengthy email.”
“Similarly, some clients will happily self-serve via a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page you may provide, whereas others prefer notifications sent directly to them instead.”
“There are so many areas within Constructive that can be utilised to tailor education to your clients based on their specific need and requirement at that point in time,” agrees Steph Cummins, Client Services Manager.
Emma continues: “By utilising a combination of Constructive’s features, you can cater to all these communication style preferences to maximise client engagement, ensuring you receive maximum value for money in your use of Constructive.”
Key Constructive areas for built-in client education
1. Progress Template
The Customer Portal Progress Template provides a customisable, visual timeline representation of key tasks and milestones. This timeline-based tool helps clients understand:
- The overall construction process
- The current stage of their project
- Upcoming tasks and milestones and what to expect in each
- Their role in the process
By presenting this information visually, you educate clients on the complexities of home building and set realistic expectations.
Within each Progress milestone, you can add content, images and videos to educate and inform your clients about what happens during each phase, what they can expect and anything they need to consider.
“The Progress Template is a visual representation of the key tasks required to achieve crucial milestones, such as starting on site and key handover. Visually demonstrating these tasks in a linear timeline educates the client on their own part to play as well as explaining what each step involves,” says Steph.
2. Welcome and free text HTML areas
You can customise your Customer Portal, Maintenance, To Do List and Online Selections with welcome messages and free text areas to:
- Set clear expectations for communication
- Explain how, and when, messages will be responded to
- Publish office and showroom hours, or holiday shutdowns
- Provide general guidance or instructions
- Explain how to lodge defects and when clients can expect to hear from you
This personalised touch helps clients understand and feel more comfortable with your processes.
“The free text and Welcome areas can really help customise your Portal and set specific expectations for your clients,” says Steph.
“For example, you might decide in the Messages tab to explain how clients’ messages will be responded to, and within what kind of time frame, as well as directing them to your FAQ page.”
3. Documents
Uploading documents into a client’s Portal is a perfect way to provide them with self-serve education around both general home building and your specific processes, while also sharing important contractual details, building specifications and design documents they can refer to at any time.
4. Maintenance
The Maintenance Wizard is a great example of educating clients about home maintenance and warranty issues in context, automatically displayed right-on-time while they are lodging defects.
- Provides timely and contextual warranty information about various defect types
- Automatically displays relevant information to clients at exactly the right moment
- Helps clients understand if an issue requires official lodgement, or can be resolved independently
- Reduces unnecessary emails and calls by empowering clients with knowledge
- Streamlines the defect and warranty process
Educating clients to comprehend what constitutes a valid defect means you can immediately help clients understand if they should fix the issue themselves, all without contacting your team, empowering them to handle these types of warranty issues independently.
By providing information proactively, you can significantly reduce the time and resources spent on addressing minor issues that fall outside of warranty coverage.
“The Maintenance Wizard is crucial to the education of clients and saves so much time and resources,” advises Steph. “You can easily tailor information and instructions about specific defect requests to allow clients to self-serve information — before they even log the issue with you!”
5. Progress Emails
Progress emails will automate the delivery of key information to your client, ensuring all clients receive the same, consistent information.
“Progress Emails ensure all of your clients are receiving the same information at the same time in their journey, regardless of their point of contact,” says Steph.
While the Progress Template can display a bite-sized explanation of the milestones, your Progress Emails are an opportunity to deliver more thorough, detailed information.
Steph says, “These assist in the streamlined delivery of communication about key stages of your build process, where a Progress Template milestone can strategically be more limited in its description.”
6. FAQ and Useful Links Pages
You can use these flexible areas to create an always-accessible, online knowledge base for your clients.
This is a great space to educate by:
- Offering promotional information or referral programs
- Answering common questions — before they’re asked
- Providing a glossary of construction terms
- Sharing links to suppliers, or additional resources
7. To Do List task descriptions
Break down complex processes into manageable steps with To Do List and use the description fields to provide clear instructions for client tasks. You can drive action and avoid delays by educating clients about their responsibilities here.
Takeaways to implement an effective education strategy
To make the most of these features in Constructive:
- Customise your content: Tailor all information to your specific company or brand processes and client needs.
- Use multiple channels: Combine bite-sized updates, detailed explanations and in-depth self-service options.
- Be consistent: Ensure all jobs are registered in Constructive to maintain a unified client experience.
- Gather feedback: Regularly ask clients about their experience and adjust your approach as needed.
- Update regularly: Keep all information current and relevant.
An educated client is a happy client — and happy clients lead to positive online reviews, referrals and a stronger brand reputation.
By leveraging the full spectrum of Constructive’s features, you’ll create an educational experience that caters to all learning styles and preferences. This comprehensive approach not only improves client satisfaction but also reduces the time your team might spend answering repetitive questions and handling unnecessary emails and phone calls.
Clients will be well-informed throughout the entire lifecycle of their build, from pre-construction and construction to warranty and maintenance.
Educate your clients with Constructive.
