Certain pieces of mail will immediately affect your blood
pressure and your attitude: A letter from your draft board
(Greetings…”); a letter from those warm and friendly folks
at the IRS; an ‘official’ letter from a collection agency.
Last month I got a letter that stated: “Dear Prospective
Juror.” My reaction was somewhere between a collection
agency and the IRS.
So, I wrote the county a letter explaining that I had
to be excused from jury duty because I’d seen every Perry
Mason and L.A. Law segment ever produced, knew
all the legal tricks and charades, and would therefore make
a terrible juror.
Today, as I sit here writing this article in the jury room,
I admit to some second thoughts on the ‘Perry Mason Gambit.’
Nevertheless, it has been an enlightening experience thus
far, and will probably remain so unless I get sequestered in
a three-month copyright infringement trial.
In fact, I’ve noticed one major area in which the jury
selection staff has done an excellent job with the 250
people sitting with me in this room: They are trying to make
sure we are delighted ‘customers.’
Why should the government care if I’m a happy juror? Well,
for one thing, they don’t want me to be a ‘can’ and leave
before I’m officially excused. And can you imagine what
would happen to the jury selection system if the
majority of jurors returned to their communities and
discussed their negative experience with all their friends?
Soon, fewer and fewer citizens would show up for jury duty.
Here are some of the things which were done to turn me into
a ‘delighted’ juror. Each of these is applicable to the
process of delighting new-home buyers:
1.
Pre-process instructions and guidelines were included in my
initial package. This early information set the tone and
specifically addressed some of my early concerns about timing,
process, dress, etc. The Result: Less anxiety about what to
expect. Another, more detailed information sheet was provided as
I entered the jury area.
2.
A highly placed executive (i.e. a judge) addressed our entire
group and thanked us for our appearance, reminded us of the
importance of our task, and acknowledged our ‘sacrifice.’ This
simple act of acknowledging our biggest concern (that we were
all giving up our normal lives for a few days) was effective in
reducing my own anger for having to cancel two meetings to be
here today. The Lesson: Very often, proactively addressing the
buyer’s obvious concerns will significantly reduce the anger and
anxiety which, if ignored, leads to dissatisfaction. Acknowledge
the concern, dissipate the anxiety.
3.
A movie of the jury and trial process, starring Fess Parker (how
could I be mad at Davey Crockett?), served to ‘officialize’ the
process. There is a wealth of psychological studies which
repeatedly confirm that the more a policy appears to be official
or formalized, the more likely it is to be followed. Ad hoc
‘rules’ are too often ignored or bent. The Lesson: Hand out your
‘rules’ to your buyers early in the process. Formalize the list,
make it look like it has been around since before the buyer was
born. Include all cut-off dates in the contract. In fact, put
everything in the contract and tell them there are no
exceptions. Be consistent.
4.
Announcements were made continuously through out our day in the
waiting room, giving us updates and status reports. These
frequent announcements did not allow us to become anxious or
worry that we may have missed something. Interestingly, I came
to trust the person giving us the information. The Lesson: We
have seen similar result in our surveys of over 100,000 new-home
buyers. Being kept informed by sales, loan and service personnel
is one of the keys to strong levels of homebuyer satisfaction.
There is a strong correlation between buyers who express delight
with the builder’s communication and those who are willing to
refer a builder to a friend.
5.
Under-promise, over-deliver. The jury information sheets
provided us with a worst case scenario: “Lunch will be one hour
long” (It was 1 1/2 hours); Lunch will start at 11:30” (It
started at 11:20). They didn’t try to entice us in their
collateral materials by saying lunch would be 1 1/2 hours long.
They gave worst case scenarios and then apparently aimed to beat
their promise each time. We were all delighted. The Lesson:
Impress the buyer with the strength of your performance, not the
hype of your promise. It’s better to promise to respond to every
service call within 48 hours and actually do it within 24, than
it is to promise to respond within 12 hours, but take 24.
6.
The judge promised us this morning that we would each receive a
“Satisfaction Survey” at the end of the day. It is, after all,
an excellent accountability tool. Who knows more about the jury
selection process than the jurors themselves? The Lesson: Who
knows more about the purchase, move-in, quality, service process
than the people living in your homes?
My Bottom Line:
Given a chance to either play golf, go to the beach, go to work,
or spend a day or two in a jury waiting room, guess which would
appear last on my list? But, next time I’m called, I’ll go more
willingly and I won’t be negative when I describe my experience
to my friends.
If an inherently onerous experience like jury duty can be made
palatable, what can we do to enhance the home buying experience?
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