Customer Service
We consider our customers' needs at each stage of the development process, from our first point of contact, through to long after the customer moves in.
Customer care
We offer help in choosing the right home, independent financial advice, choice in the finishing touches, facilitating the legal processes, and ensuring the move day runs smoothly – plus after-care to ensure we have met expectations.
To ensure high standards and tight control over the build quality, we involve our Customer Service teams early on in the development cycle.
At build completion a Customer Services Manager carries out a thorough and independent inspection of each plot, assessing it against Crest Nicholson's high standards of workmanship and finish. Areas falling short of our standards must be rectified by the site team within three days.
Moving home can be stressful, and we tailor our customer care to ensure a smooth transition for every individual customer. Providing regular and honest communication forms a key part of building and maintaining good relationships with all of our customers.
Measuring customer satisfaction
Measuring the satisfaction of our customers is fundamental to understanding and improving service levels. We have used data from two sources: an independent research company and the HBF. We changed our providers this year so do not have a full set of data from them. The results we present here are from the HBF National New Homes Survey, covering three years for comparability.
| HBF National New Homes |
|---|
| |
HBF Benchmark |
2008 |
2007 |
2006 |
| % of responses very/fairly satisfied |
| Service provided during the buying process |
77.5 |
75.7 |
74 |
77.8 |
| Service after moving in |
66.1 |
67.4 |
59.7 |
58.5 |
| Overall satisfaction with the quality of the home |
79.8 |
81.7 |
74.6 |
77.1 |
| % of responses that would |
| Recommend Crest Nicholson to a friend |
78.4 |
79.4 |
74.5 |
79.5 |
We have made significant progress in overall satisfaction in 2008 and over 79% of our customers would recommend us to a friend.
Although our score for the service we provide during the buying process has improved in the last year, it is still below the HBF benchmark, so we will be working hard to improve this.
Improving customer service
During 2009 Crest Nicholson will invest in an improved customer satisfaction survey with new service providers. The revised survey will enable a better understanding of customers' needs and views, including sustainability issues, and will allow us to better benchmark ourselves against our peers.
The Customer Service Business Improvement Workgroup (BIW) oversees the quality of our customer service and are developing a Customer Charter to underpin our Mission Statement and best practice procedures.
To ensure our subcontractors deliver standards of workmanship in line with Crest Nicholson's and our customers' expectations, we incorporate a mandatory 'Customer Service Agreement' within tender contracts. This has created an invaluable benchmark for build quality and we intend to review and improve this during 2009.
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