Customer service
We want customers to receive a great service, clear information about their new home and the build process and a prompt response to any issues that arise.
Customer satisfaction – how are we rated?
We track customer satisfaction using the Home Builders Federation (HBF) 8-week and 9-month independent survey results. In 2024, 96% of customers at 8-weeks would recommend us to a friend (2023: 90%). We are pleased to have increased our score and met our target to maintain a five-star rating. Our 9-month satisfaction scores give us insight into how customers feel about the homes and places we build over the longer term. Our most recent score was 80% (2023: 77%). This is our highest score to date and we believe it reflects the work we’ve been doing to strengthen our customer service, build quality and placemaking and to improve the time taken to resolve customer issues.
In addition to the HBF surveys, we use our InHouse survey to gather customer feedback at 2 weeks and 6 months. The surveys enable us to find out more about customer experiences with us and identify any concerns, with the survey at nine month providing insights into build quality, after care and customer experiences of living on our developments.
From 2025, we are extending our customer journey to include further follow ups with customers across the first two years of living in their new home. This will provide insight into the experience of living in our homes and on our developments and the performance of the estates management companies we work with.
We encourage customers to leave reviews on Trustpilot. At the end of 2024, with 10,107 reviews, we had a 4 out of 5-star rating (end of 2023: 4 out of 5) with a trust score of 4.0 out of 5 (2023: 3.9 out of 5).
Roles and responsibilities
Each of our regional businesses has a Customer Director who sits on the management team to elevate the voice of the customer in our regions. They review data on customer issues, complaints and defects to identify any trends or recurring issues and put measures in place to address them and improve service.
Incentivising strong performance
Customer service and quality are incentivised from the top of the organisation, linked to a significant portion of our Executive Incentive Scheme. We track progress and calculate bonus payouts using a combination of internal and independent external measures which include: HBF 8-week and 9-month customer survey results; CQR scores conducted independently by the NHBC, and the average reportable items per inspection found during NHBC inspections at key stages of the build.
In addition, 20% of our senior leadership’s performance-related bonus was dependent on achieving customer satisfaction targets in 2024. We also integrate customer service and quality into the corporate bonus scheme for all employees.
Employee training
Our training academies help us build the functional skills we need to deliver great customer service. It includes:
- Our Academy of Customer Excellence for customer service teams covers our product range, Customer Journey, consumer protection legislation, technical standards, and health, safety and the environment. 40 employees were enrolled in 2024.
- Our Academy of Sales Excellence builds the skills, knowledge and expertise of our sales teams to deliver excellent customer service and consistent sales in all market conditions. 60 employees were enrolled in 2024.
- A comprehensive induction training for all new joiners in our customer service teams.
- Upskilling for our customer service managers, launched in 2024, to help improve the performance of our teams and support customer service managers to develop the skills needed to transition to a customer director role.
Service improvement plans
We track customer service scores for each regional business and if these fall below our minimum level, we put in place a customer service improvement plan to address the causes. The managing director and management team for the regional business meets monthly with our Group Customer Director to review progress against the agreed actions and our GMT receive a monthly update on progress made. This process has had a positive impact on our customer satisfaction scores. In 2024, we introduced a similar process for underperforming sites with progress reviewed monthly.
New Homes Quality Code
We have signed up to the New Homes Quality Code and aligned our processes to its requirements. Customer-facing employees are trained on the Code as well as many colleagues in our commercial and technical functions and some of our subcontractors.
Resolving issues and complaints
When issues arise for our customers, we want to address them as quickly as possible. We have a target to resolve 70% of customer issues within 28 days. In 2024, we achieved 66% (2023: 60%). Our MyTask portal enables us to monitor sub-contractors’ response times to customer issues. We follow up with a call to our customer after the sub-contractor has visited to confirm the issue has been resolved satisfactorily.
If issues aren’t resolved to our customers’ satisfaction, they can raise a complaint with our customer service teams. We have trained our teams on handling complaints effectively and sympathetically and only trained employees are authorised to manage complaints. We aim to resolve all complaints or have an agreed action plan in place within eight weeks. We achieved this for 77% of complaints in 2024 (2023: 68%).
Any complaints that can’t be resolved are referred to the regional Customer Director. This process is overseen by our Group Customer Director. If customers are dissatisfied with our final response, or with any delay in providing our final response, they can ask the New Homes Ombudsman Service to investigate.
Customer Directors monitor progress against our targets in their region. Our Managing Directors, Divisional Chairs and other senior leaders also review customer service indicators such as complaints and time taken to resolve issues down to site level.