The Top 5 Digital Resolutions Homebuilders Should be Making for 2024

The new year is the perfect time for homebuilders to reflect on their business and set important goals for the year ahead.  One important goal that homebuilders of all sizes share, is the desire to improve the homebuyer or tenant experience – and one of the surest ways to achieve this goal is by resolving to go digital.

Homebuilders that use digitisation to optimise their processes while adopting a customer-first approach, are more likely to achieve long-term success and drive valuable customer referrals.

If improving the home user experience is on your to-do list, here are five Digital New Year’s resolutions you may want to consider – along with some practical tips for accomplishing them.

1. Go Digital to Dazzle at the Beginning of your Sales and Tenancy Processes

Your customer relationship begins from the initial prospecting through to the sales or tenancy agreement and contract signing.  When you provide an efficient and state-of-the-art experience for your customer, you ensure everything starts on the right foot.

In this digital age, your customers’ expectations have evolved.  Homebuilders need to do a lot more than design and build beautiful homes if they want to succeed in a competitive market.

Wowing your customers from the outset, is a must and one of the best way to do this is to provide a digital experience that your customers go and talk about to their friends and family.

This isn’t just ensuring a smooth digital experience from the get go, that is an obvious must.  This is providing a unique and dazzling experience, using the best of technology to your advantage.

When you offer a VR Home Tour for your prospective buyers, you are sure to capture their attention.  These immersive experiences allow your customers to take a virtual viewing of your show home, including details of fitted appliances and systems, and how to use them.

Not only does this have the effect of increasing your word-of-mouth reputation as a builder willing to go the extra mile in your sales and tenancy processes, it also opens up your pool of customers by allowing prospects unable to attend viewings in person to take a look inside your properties.

If you want to wow your customers and get them talking about you to their friends and family, then 2024 is the year to invest in VR Home Tours.

2. Use Digital Tools to Listen to the Voice of your Customers

In any industry, understanding the wants and needs of your client base is crucial.  After all, how can you create a better customer experience if you don’t truly know what your home users think about the quality of your construction, your processes, and their interactions with your business?

‘Customer surveys are a sound investment with tangible returns for builders of all sizes,’ says Bokka Group.  The actionable data gathered can help you improve the experience of your customers, while generating higher levels of employee satisfaction.

Often, homebuilders find a lack of budget, resources and time can impede their surveying goals.  And the administrative task of reading and collecting data from a mountain of completed paper surveys can be overwhelming.

Opting for a digital platform, such as our resident engagement and property management app, Spaciable Living, allows homebuilders to carry out surveys with ease.

Using the Surveys tool on Spaciable Living, homebuilders can use the app to send out surveys across the whole development at the tap of a button.  Not only does this ease of use encourage survey sending, it also makes it easier for participants to respond as they have the means to do so within the palm of their hands.

Gaining feedback from your customers is vital in the journey towards optimising your customers’ experience and ensuring the homes you provide are meeting their needs.  And going digital is the easiest way to make surveying an achievable habit for your business.

3. Offer a Responsive Digital Aftercare Experience

A homebuilder’s customer care office can be a busy place and often homebuyers and tenants can feel as if their requests for information or reported defects are left unheard or slowly responded to.

Today more than ever, home users prefer the option of reporting problems and communicating digitally.  The speed of digital communication, and the assurance that your message has been delivered to the correct member of the team is a desirable feature of homebuilders who have digitised their processes.

Spaciable Living offers its users a Defect Reporting tool, which can be used to notify you of any issues, along with an uploaded image.  This is initially responded to by a ChatBot, who will ask a series of questions to offer advice on how to resolve the issue, or escalate the issue to the relevant member of your team.  Not only does this feature filter out the reported issues that home users are responsible for correcting themselves, it also provides an instant response to your home users, which is a comfort when they are worried about something within the home.

With Spaciable Living, homebuilders and their customers can also benefit from the Chat feature.  Here, residents can communicate with one another, create groups and send messages to their Concierge, if required.  This feature is successful in helping residents get to know one another, while allowing admins to post updates and notifications across the development to inform residents of any news, events or works that might be taking place.

By providing a digital experience that allows communication with the developer or fellow residents at the tap of a button, your home users feel quickly and easily settled into their new neighbourhood, and confident about living in their new surroundings.

4. Increase the Use of Shared Spaces and On-site Facilities by Going Digital

A recent study examining the value of shared spaces in a Helsinki neighbourhood found that, ‘Communal areas can foster a sense of community which not only results in better wellbeing for residents, but a feeling of satisfaction which results in longer tenancies and fewer complaints,’ as revealed by Virtu Property. 

So, for the benefit of your home users’ enjoyment and their desire to continue living in one of your properties, it is a good idea to ensure those facilities you’ve thoughtfully integrated into the development are in fact being used and utilised to their full potential.

One easy way to make this happen is to make the use of these spaces easy for your residents.  The Shared Spaces feature on Spaciable Living enables residents to easily view, book and pay for on-site amenities through the app.  Pricing, including deposits, and time slots can be customised by admins, minimising the admin involved per transaction. 

Residents can also leave reviews of the amenities, allowing you to monitor feedback on facilities and identify areas for investment. 

Whether you’re providing communal workspaces, gym classes or screening rooms, this feature increases resident engagement with the development, leading to happier residents who value the facilities you’ve provided.

5. Impress and Inform with Digital Signage

Your residents are happily living in one of your homes and benefitting from your top notch aftercare, but this is not your last opportunity to make an impact on the customer experience.  Ever wondered how to make your information more exciting?

You might consider traditional notice boards in no need of updating as a means of informing residents of any news or events taking place on the development. However, ‘Research shows that digital displays catch attention 400% more than if you used static ones,’ says Tech Arrival. 

These eye-catching displays could therefore prove a worthwhile investment for your business.

While digital signage looks impressive on the development; it also offers building managers an efficient means of displaying important information – especially where that information can change. 

Messaging can be easily updated, changing multiple displays from one central location, which minimises inconvenience and time costs when information needs to be adjusted.

It can also be used to relay safety information, such as fire escape routes, and comply with Building Safety legislation. 

To improve site safety, you can position our QR code stickers in communal areas.  When residents scan the code, their Spaciable Living app will open, displaying the message.

If any year was the year to go digital, 2024 is it. Please get in touch to discuss your options and to book a demonstration of Spaciable Living.