In the rapidly evolving landscape of the housing industry, digital transformation is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Digital handover and defect management systems are leading this transformation with Guided Home’s solution helping developers realise material time and costs savings compared to legacy processes and technology, while also reducing operational risk and errors.
With the right technology solution significant cost saving can be the direct result of the efficiencies that some digital systems bring to the table. While “measure twice, cut once” is a site advice staple, data is different. The more data interactions the greater the cost, the greater the errors and the greater the risk.
Digital technology means entering things once, collaborating effectively, sharing information, re-using and optimising data and documents. Guided Home is more than a traditional handover or defect app. It is smart asset libraries and unique customer journey app and connected home handover solution make it easy to run your business at scale with an easy and cost effective digital solution that is fast to implement.
It’s not just operational control and compliance, it’s cost saving, accuracy and a digital, value-added experience your customers expect – and that ensures better outcomes and transparency throughout.
The Cost of Non-Compliance
Non-compliance with new regulations, consumer codes and industry best practices can be costly for non-digital businesses, with potential fines, compensation, reputational damage and poor customer reviews – not to mention the sheer administrative overhead placed on your teams to support a manual, fragmented offline process.
The exact cost can vary and can be hard to quantify, but it’s clear that the risk is significant. Moreover, the cost isn’t just financial. Non-compliance can lead to a loss of trust and tension with customers and stakeholders, which can be even more damaging in the long run impacting surveys and NPS scores.
In an industry where reputation and customer reviews are everything, the cost of non-compliance can be devastating. It’s not just about the immediate financial impact, but also about the long-term effects on a company’s reputation, customer relationships and satisfaction scores.
What are the New Homes Quality Code (NHQC) Statement of Principles?
With the emergence of the New Homes Quality Board (NHQB) and the New Homes Ombudsman Service (NHOS) that helps protect consumers, it’s critical to consider these principles in your approach to consumers:
To not only meet but have evidence to prove compliance with these principles it’s crucial to have digital processes that not only support them but support you and your business to achieve these objectives in an efficient, consistent and cost-effective way.
Guide Your Customers Home With Guided Home
Guided Home is at the forefront of this digital revolution working with leading housebuilders, housing associations, build to rent (BTR) and build to sell (BTS) developers to rapidly digitise and simplify the customer journey, competence, compliance and in turn customer satisfaction.
Guided Home’s native mobile app and web experience that unites new home property and safety information, gives your customers one place to go to for key information from pre-reservation to the end of the journey and relationship with you or the home. All this via your own ready for seamless sharing and handover to homeowners via your own custom-branded solution.
Our unique approach to digitisation simplifies the customer journey home handover and aftercare processes, reducing costs and empowering your teams to deliver consistent, compliant and professional with minimal time and effort. You can have confidence that key internal controls, best practices and obligations across the customer journey are being met.
With Guided Home, you benefit from powerful home templates, smart assets and document tagging that significantly reduce errors and time spent per handover.
This streamlined process means housebuilders using Guided Home across the customer journey can complete 1000s of compliant handovers – meeting all necessary requirements and avoiding potential fines, complaints and compensation claims – in the time it would have previously taken them to do one, using legacy processes and technology.
Moreover, Guided Home provides clear record keeping and evidence of information sharing, compliance and transparency across the customer journey from sales launch to completion, handover and across the defect liability period. This not only gives businesses peace of mind but also builds trust with customers and stakeholders.
This trust is crucial in an industry where reputation can significantly impact success. By providing clear, easy-to-understand evidence of compliance, Guided Home helps businesses build trust with their customers while driving significant operational efficiency and effectiveness across the customer journey.
The Human Factor
While people are an essential part of any business, they can also be a source of errors and inefficiencies. By automating and digitising processes, Guided Home reduces the reliance on human input, thereby reducing errors and increasing output and efficiency. Across the customer journey this is particularly important as errors can lead to significant re-work, costs and potential conflict with customers. By reducing the reliance on human input, Guided Home helps businesses avoid these potential pitfalls and ensure a smooth, efficient journey.
Digitising key parts of the customer journey in this way, frees up valuable resource and time which return the focus back to the customer, ensuring that they remain at the heart of every decision with more time for in-person touch points.
Integration and Compliance: Record Keeping and Future Handovers
Guided Home isn’t just a standalone platform but part of your ecosystem. Built from the ground up to rapidly integrate with the systems and data your business relies on.
Guided Home simplifies and unites fragmented data and systems you use today to maximise efficiency and deliver significant long term value. Smart use of integrations dramatically reduce manual re-keying, errors and repetitive tasks. This is particularly important in light of the Building Safety Act 2022, which emphasises the importance of maintaining and handing over building information to keep residents informed and safe.
Guided Home makes it easy to create, maintain and share information and documents, ensuring that all necessary information is available to your teams and customers in real-time in one easy to use app, whenever it’s needed. This not only helps to ensure compliance across the customer journey but also makes the future handover process smoother and ensures that data is consistent across platforms, reducing the risk of errors and inconsistencies.
Adherence to NHQB Code of Practice
Guided’s commitment to quality and safety is embodied in its unique customer centric platform that simplifies information sharing, transparency and uplifts standards for developers large and small. Guided Home is proud to be an accredited supplier of the New Homes Quality Board, helping our clients to effortlessly adhere to the New Homes Quality Code (NHQC), with Guided Home’s instant digital customer centric approach that puts homebuyers at the centre of your business processes. The Code represents the gold standard across the housing industry, and our unique product innovations that support NHQC compliance demonstrates our unwavering commitment to excellence.
If your NHQC approval has been held up we can help accelerate your readiness and support future audits.
Read the Candleston Home’s Case study to learn how we can help by clicking here.
Seamless Defect Remediation
Inspections and defect management is a critical aspect of the new home handover and aftercare process. By seamlessly integrating defect capture with Guided Home’s handover experience; the customer benefits from a single interface between them and the housebuilder eliminating slow feedback loops and chasing for the latest updates. Guided Home’s approach to system integrations means homeowner defects can be seamlessly passed through to other systems like Procore, Trimble and MS Dynamics – used internally to manage defects.
This minimises internal process changes, maximises operational efficiencies and control, while giving the homeowner a superior experience and keeping the customer fully informed on progress updates with one easy to use mobile and web solution. You can even choose to Guided Home’s native defect remediation capabilities to manage and track tasks to resolution.
By resolving defects faster, Guided Home reduces the time and resources spent on remediation and servicing customer queries, leading to significant cost savings. Additionally, faster defect resolution leads to improved customer satisfaction, as customers can enjoy their new homes without the stress and hassle of dealing with unresolved defects.
Improved Customer Communication
Communication is key in any business, and the housing industry is no exception. Guided Home complements your personalised customer service with a digital information sharing solution that improves communication with customers with a truly useful app for the end to end customer journeyhome handover and aftercare package. With Guided Home, homebuyers have immediate access to accurate and up to date information they need in one place across the customer journey. Effortlessly accessed via custom branded web and mobile apps. This transparency reduces the need for back-and-forth queries and communication, saving a material amount of time and frustration for both the customer and your teams.
This streamlined digital communication channel ensures that more gets done in less time, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.
By integrating with other systems; providing rapid information sharing and and improving customer communication, Guided Home is transforming the new home customer journey. Our platform reduces costs, improves compliance, and enhances the customer experience, providing a clear advantage in a challenging and competitive market.
The Future is Digital
The housing industry is accelerating towards a digital future, and businesses need to adapt to stay competitive. With Guided Home, you can quickly catch up, adapt and thrive. Our platform reduces costs, improves compliance, and enhances the customer experience, providing a clear advantage in a competitive market.
As the industry continues to evolve Guided Home’s integrated digital solution is becoming increasingly important in a connected world. By embracing these solutions now, residential developers, housebuilders and housing associations can position themselves for success in the digital future.
Here are some specific examples of how Guided Home can significantly improve the collaboration and handoff between development, sales and customer care teams to deliver a much more efficient and compliant process, and in turn a much better experience across the customer journey:
- By providing a clear and easy-to-use platform, Guided Home helps to reduce the stress and confusion that can often be associated with the new home customer journey, handover and aftercare experience.
- By automating tasks, eliminating paperwork and providing transparency, Guided Home saves a material amount of time, frustration and carbon for both the customer and your teams.
- By providing a single source of the truth for your teams and customers for homeowner information sharing and capture; and an auditable digital record across the customer journey, Guided Home ensures that customers feel informed and receive the service and outcomes they expect.
- By integrating with other systems, Guided Home ensures that all necessary information is available to the customer when they need it. Your teams benefit from seamless automated processes, a single source of the truth, and material reduce the time and effort required to share information across the customer journey.
By focusing on customer satisfaction, you can build a strong reputation for your business, attract new customers and exceed expectations with ease. Guided Home can help you achieve this goal by providing a custom branded digital handover solution for your teams and customers that is smooth, efficient, and compliant.
To find out more, book a free demo here.
