Keith Moore, director of product marketing for home renovation and design platform Houzz, reveals the advantages of ensuring you're as technologically up to date as you can be.
Technology has become a vital tool to stay competitive in an industry that is constantly evolving. It has the power to completely transform the customer experience from the initial quote through to handing the finished project over, and it can significantly reduce the amount of time you spend on admin work. This is crucial in a highly competitive market where homeowners are demanding more from tradespeople. They want better project and financial visibility, clear communication, and help with visualising their home post-renovation.
Homeowners are increasingly tech-savvy and they expect you to be too. They want technology to make their home renovation project easier, as it has been proven to do in other areas of their lives. According to research by Houzz, customers highly value responsiveness and clarity when deciding who to hire. They want to see proposed ideas and costs presented in a clear and attractive way, which means each client-facing document should be as professional-looking as possible. Ensure yours are branded, clearly presented with costs, details and images, and can be easily digested at a glance. Speed is also key, when you're the first to deliver a proposal you’ll have a real advantage over any competitors.
Technology like augmented reality and interactive 3D Floor Plans are revolutionising the home improvement industry and can be a real benefit in helping homeowners to visualise how their homes will look following a renovation. Bringing the final design to life in this way can also help to avoid decision fatigue for your client. Understanding how everything will come together gives them more confidence to make decisions and will ultimately help to move projects forward more quickly.
Renovation projects are often significant emotional and financial investments for the homeowner and they want to know that their project means as much to you as it does to them. To create a collaborative environment and build a strong working relationship, offer tools like Proposals and Rooms Plans that will help clients feel involved in the process, and Timelines and Daily Logs so they can follow what is happening. By doing so, you'll turn the working relationship between you and the customer into a partnership rather than a business transaction.
Transparency and convenience are also crucial elements of the customer experience, so it’s important to make it as easy as possible for a client to access information about their project, understand the schedule, track communications and make payments. For example, with the Houzz Pro Client Dashboard, all project details, past communication and daily updates are in one place and clients know where to find answers to their questions, day or night. This is the type of service that they will remember, helping to turn happy clients into a source for repeat business or referrals.
By successfully incorporating this technology into your business, you’ll deliver a 5-star experience with less effort, making it easier to stand out in a competitive market and build a reputation that helps land future clients.
