Significant uptake levels since the launch of online reservation
More than a third (34%) use online reservation outside of sales office hours
Friday confirmed as the most popular day to reserve a home
Half of Redrow’s customers are now legally completing the reservation of their new home online, using the leading housebuilder’s latest My Redrow innovation, online reservation. This success comes on the back of the new service which launched earlier this year, meaning a significant proportion of customers have changed their behaviour in the last six months.
Accessed via the housebuilder’s award-winning online members’ area, My Redrow, online reservation has been rolled out nationally to the majority of new Redrow developments where the Arts and Crafts inspired Heritage Collection and Georgian influenced Regent Collections are available. This includes The Oaks at Taylor’s Chase in Great Sankey, Warrington, and Ebbsfleet Quarter, part of Ebbsfleet Garden City, allowing customers the convenience of reserving their new home in their own time and in the comfort of their chosen surroundings.
More than a third of buyers (34%) chose to complete the reservation of their home during the hours of 6pm and 9am, when the sales centres are closed. Redrow also witnessed multiple customers accessing online reservation during the hours of 12am and 3am, indicating a demand from shift workers, while a further 34% legally completed the reservation of their new property over lunch time between 12pm and 2pm. These statistics highlight the need from buyers for more flexibility in completing the administrative part of their home purchase at their own pace and at a time convenient for them.
Previously, completing a series of legal declarations and reviewing plans and drawings for the chosen plot would have been discussed during a three-hour meeting with the Redrow sales team. Buyers now have more time to consider the documentation at their leisure and can consult Redrow’s sales team and / or their legal adviser if they wish.
Redrow’s latest statistics also show 19% of buyers choose to legally complete the reservation of their home online on Friday, the most popular day, followed by 16% on Wednesday and just 13% of buyers complete their reservation on Saturdays.
Claire Jarvis, Group Sales Director at Redrow, comments: “We’re aware that people’s time is becoming increasingly precious, which is why we recently launched our latest innovation in My Redrow, online reservation, that allows customers to fully, legally complete the reservation of their new home online. More than half of our customers are now using the new service, which goes to show the huge demand for this level of flexibility. It’s not just shopping, consuming news, booking doctor’s appointments and air flights that people want to do anywhere, it even goes to one of the most important decisions of people’s lives – buying a house.
“It makes sense for homebuyers to review important documentation when and where they have the space to do so and we’re finding that most customers are enjoying this freedom. People lead such diverse lifestyles, with shift work, commuting and family-life to juggle, we saw the addition of online reservation as a vital part of our overall customer experience.”
Family reserves their dream home at The Oaks at Taylor’s Chase in Warrington
Customers Serena and Nick Parker used Redrow’s online service after finding it challenging to reserve their dream home from the sales office with two young children in tow.
When the Redrow team suggested they could use the online reservation service the couple leapt at the chance and Serena says it made securing their ideal home at The Oaks at Taylor’s Chase, in Great Sankey, Warrington, simple and straight-forward.
Serena Parker said: “It was fantastic. We could wait until our two young boys were in bed and then sit down together and go through every detail. It was all there in front of us, and it was so easy to do. The beauty of reserving and making your choices online is that you can do it in stages if you wish and go back to it, but Nick and I sat down and did it all in one go, reserving the home we wanted and choosing all the upgrades and extras too.”
Redrow is committed to providing an excellent service to its customers and was this year awarded the top Five Star rating by the Home Builders Federation (HBF), increasing its customer satisfaction scores year-on-year since the launch of its ‘Customer First’ strategy in 2015. It also became the first top ten housebuilder to join the Institute of Customer Services and this year was nominated for ‘Best Customer Satisfaction Strategy’ at the UK Customer Satisfaction awards.