In today’s building industry, maintaining exceptional client communication across different staff members, all while scaling your business can feel like an impossible balancing act. That’s where the power of automation comes in. Let’s explore how Constructive’s suite of products, particularly the Customer Portal, is transforming the way home-building companies interact with their clients.
The communication challenge
By nature, home-building projects generate countless updates, documents and client enquiries.
Without proper systems in place, teams can find themselves buried under an avalanche of progress-chasing calls, repetitive emails, questions and document requests. This not only drains resources but can also impact the quality of client service. The traditional approach of manually managing client communications simply isn’t sustainable or consistent.
Enter the Customer Portal: Your 24/7 communication hub
Constructive’s Customer Portal leverages sophisticated automation to streamline client communication while reducing staff workload. The platform serves as a central hub where clients can access everything they need, any time of day, while automated processes work routinely in the background ensuring you never miss a beat.
Automated Progress Updates
Say goodbye to manual updates. Gone are the days of spending hours crafting individual progress reports and contacting each client one by one. The Customer Portal automatically shares real-time build updates with clients, triggering customised email notifications as milestones are completed.
Educational content can be seamlessly delivered at each stage, ensuring your clients remain informed and engaged throughout their building journey. These progress emails are particularly valuable when staff members are on leave, as they ensure communication consistency regardless of who’s managing the project.
“Milestone completions and progress emails are essential to automate,” advises Client Success Manager, Emma Lord. “Automatically notifying clients when milestones are completed —either during admin/preconstruction, or on-site — as well as adding any additional templated emails with standard instructions, advice and detailed educational content, is a game changer.”
“Without this, you are paying staff to copy and paste the same emails and info across to clients over and over again every week, decreasing the capacity of each team member and reducing the volume of clients they can handle while still maintaining a high standard of customer service.”
“Also, approaching this from a team member’s point of view, it can detract from the employee experience. The repetition of sending the same information day in, day out can feel monotonous.”
Steph Cummins, Client Services Manager, also believes automated progress updates are a fundamental piece of customer service.
“Progress Emails really are the unsung heroes of Constructive when it comes to streamlined, automated communication. Each client needs to be delivered specific information at each stage throughout the build process; however, this can be difficult to manage when you are relying on individual staff members to deliver this information the same way every time.”
“Automating your Progress Emails from your Portal ensures every client gets the same communication at each stage regardless of who their point of contact, even when they may be on leave!”
Document management made simple
The Portal transforms your document management into an easy, streamlined and paperless process.
Clients can instantly access contract plans, variations, and handover packs whenever they need them. When new documents are uploaded, the system automatically notifies clients, eliminating the need for a manual email to each client. Through powerful integration capabilities, information flows seamlessly between the back-end systems you already use, eliminating double-handling.
Visual progress tracking
The Customer Portal makes sharing images from site effortless. Site photos and videos are automatically uploaded to their individual Portal, where they can even share their project’s progress on Facebook with family and friends.
These visual updates dramatically reduce progress-chasing inquiries while keeping clients excited and confident about their project’s development.
Simplify selections
“Packages can be a great way to display online selections that form the scheme for a favourite display home, or investor type packages where clients are prompted to choose from scheme A, B or C,” advises Steph.
“By selecting a predefined package from within Constructive, your clients’ selections — and your paperwork — can be pre-filled with all the selections and even populate options for your clients to make from within those schemes, for example, a ‘dark’ scheme has an option for a tiled and Colorbond roof for your client to choose from, ensuring no disruption to the overall scheme.”
Reduce human error
“Standard items, notes, client notes and trade notes in the Reports module can save hours of time and ensure consistency,” says Emma.
“Transferring client selections into multiple reports for multiple purposes, for example, internal versus external, client versus trade — all of this is fairly manual without the use of Constructive Online Selections. It can cut out hours’ worth of administrative cutting, pasting and double-checking, and reduces the likeliness of human error which can result in costly errors and delays on site.”
Smart survey management
Understanding client satisfaction is crucial, and the Portal makes gathering feedback simple.
Constructive can automatically trigger surveys via the survey software you already use, like Survey Monkey, Zoho and Qualtrics, at key milestones. It even does the follow-up for you, with integrated reminders gently prompting clients to submit their surveys.
The results speak for themselves – Constructive data shows some residential building companies using the Customer Portal Surveys module have seen survey response rates soar from an industry average of 20% to an impressive 45%.
Streamline, scale, succeed: Automated customer communications
Constructive has the unique ability to manage communication touchpoints automatically.
Instead of staff spending hours copying and pasting standard emails, the Customer Portal orchestrates a sophisticated communication strategy via customisable automation.
Milestone completion notifications, educational content delivery, client selections reminders and message routing all happen automatically, while the staff contact information displayed updates dynamically based on the project phase.
Real results
The impact of automation on business operations can be significant.
Danielle Mangan, Administration Manager of WA Building Company reflects: “It’s made our lives so much easier. We’re able to provide better service to our clients, while behind the scenes we are actually doing less than we were before, with less staff than we had before.”
Beyond efficiency: Creating a better experience
Automation isn’t just about saving time — it’s about creating a more consistent, professional and transparent client experience.
Constructive ensures round-the-clock access to project information, delivers consistent communication across all projects and provides proactive updates that build trust. Response times are reduced, and clients receive enhanced education throughout the build process.
Scaling operations without sacrificing service quality becomes simple, ultimately leading to improved client satisfaction.
The future of home-building client communication is here — and it’s automated. With Constructive, builders can deliver an exceptional client experience while reducing administrative work.
Ready to embrace automation?
