Customer Satisfaction of Privately Built New Homes in the Northwest of England

Abstract

In 2005 the Home Builders Federation (HBF) developed a strategy to improve the overall level of customer satisfaction within house building in the UK. This was developed as a direct result of the findings of the Barker review (2004), which demanded that the sector improve its approach to customer satisfaction. Barker (2004) set targets for the private housebuilding sector, the housebuilders initially responded and met the targets, however the HBF's annually reported figures for the new homeowner's levels of customer satisfaction indicate that the
housebuilders performance has been inconsistent, and the results have not been maintained. Furthermore, the HBF's annual results only report the national figures, which are not broken down to provide regional information which would allow for the twelve geographical regions to be compared.

The aim of the research is to establish the landscape of customer satisfaction for the purchasers of new homes within the North West of England. This research further examines how house builders use the data collected by the HBF to improve the service provided to the customers, the transition of any changes into practice and the overall management of the customer satisfaction process at all levels within the house builder's organisation.

The research was carried out using a mixed method approach, encompassing both phenomenological (qualitative) and positivist (quantitative) approaches to the data collection. The results reported within this thesis are based on eighteen semi structured interviews with all levels of management for three sizes of housebuilders and 134 questionnaires returned by new homeowners within the NW of England. Analysis of the data from the questionnaire established that the new homeowner's customer satisfaction, levels with the exception of recommend the builder, are significantly lower than the national results published by the HBF. The interviews revealed that there is a significant gap between the published statistics and the current practice of housebuilders. Additionally, there is a palpable divide between senior/site management and the sales and aftercare services provided by the housebuilders. The research concluded that until housebuilders address this apparent disconnect and make a paradigm shift to completely embrace customer satisfaction and customer care the overall service provided to the homeowners is unlikely to improve.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Glasgow Caledonian University
Supervisor	Nigel Craig (Supervisor)