The Most Important Department In Home Building

The biggest mistake most home builders make when staffing their warranty department is that the warranty department is treated as the training ground for production teams. Your warranty technicians should be your most senior and seasoned field staff. It should be a badge of honor to join the warranty department. It is your warranty team that is the last contact point with your customers. To be successful your warranty department has to understand all the facets of construction to know if the reported issue is an installation problem with your trade partner or a material defect that should be covered by a manufacturer’s warranty.

The first visit to a customer’s house should be to review reported problems and record what is going to be addressed during the warranty process. What a lot of home builders forget is to track unwarrantable issues. That’s right. You need to track what you’re not going to fix. By tracking every reported issue you can confirm if a specific concern has already been evaluated and why it hasn’t been addressed. Some customers think that if they keep asking the same question they will get the answer they seek. Only accurate service records can show why the repair was denied in the past.

When your warranty technician goes to a customer’s house, give him all the tools he will need to succeed. He should have a list of the reported warranty issues and what they are going to review with the customer. Include a list of all past service work for the home. It’s important for him to know what was repaired during his previous visits to the home. Only when he has the whole picture of the completed and uncompleted service work can he make a fair decision of what needs to happen to move forward.

Make sure your warranty technicians give customers a verbal or preferably written expectation of the time frame needed to complete the repair. If the repair requires multiple trade partners, then schedule them for the same day and call the customer with the date and time. If the appointment has to get skipped due to the weather, then call your customer, and quickly reschedule a new date and time.

When it comes to deciding what is covered by your warranty manual, apply the rules equally to all customers. A neighbor told me, “I wasn’t mad that he didn’t fix the crack in my driveway. I was mad because someone down the street had a crack smaller than mine and they kept complaining and eventually someone came out. Why should theirs get repaired and mine wasn’t?” We failed with that customer because we didn’t apply the rules fairly. A customer shouldn’t be treated differently based on who hears the problem or how often they complain to get something fixed.

One of the easiest ways for a home building company to generate additional sales is to completely satisfy their current customers. Delivering a well-built home with the fewest defects in the shortest time possible isn’t possible without communicating with your customers. When it comes to your warranty department, communicate often with your customers, record the contact points in your automated system and apply the warranty rules fairly and equally. Only by developing an efficient warranty department can you be sure you’re last contact is the one you want you want your customers to relay to their friends.