Home Builder Warranty Claims: Streamlining Communication and Project Management

Addressing warranty claims is an important part of doing business as a home builder. However, it’s vital to streamline this process to minimize the resources and time it takes away from your primary profit-making activities. Home builders need a comprehensive digital solution for managing homeowner warranty requests, with communication, tracking and scheduling all in one place. Hyphen Solutions offers electronic Warranty Management as part of our BuildPro home building software suite.

Streamlined Communication From Homeowner to Builder to Trades and Suppliers

When a homeowner has a problem such as a drywall crack or broken garbage disposal, they simply log into their account and enter the information with the click of a button. It’s as easy as writing an email. It’s also as fast as an emergency phone hotline — you will receive the information instantly — with the advantage of an easily accessible “paper trail” that documents the entire process.

Homeowners can send photos as well as written comments. They can sit on their couch in their living room, or be anywhere in their home, take a photo of the issue on their phone or tablet and attach it right to their request.

When you receive the request, it’s already connected to the customer’s contact information and the home’s address. There’s no need to go searching through another file. Also on the portal, you can view not only the homeowners’ requests and photos but also digital schematics, blueprints, specifications and other information related to the home and the repair.

With this information at your fingertips, you’re ready to start the project. If the solution is obvious, you can immediately contact the supplier or trade that’s needed, right from the module. You can coordinate a repair schedule with homeowners and trades. Or you can schedule an appointment for a tech or customer representative to go out and look at the problem first.

Once your rep has reviewed the problem, they can send a message to the correct trade to have the repair scheduled. If multiple trades are needed at different times, such as a drywaller and painter, that scheduling can be easily taken care of. All the scheduling can be done while your rep is still at the home, talking to the homeowner.

Real-time interaction gets rid of the downtime that you usually spend waiting for responses and actions when you’re communicating with all the parties involved in a warranty claim. Your supplier or trade will have all the information you have, including photos, drawings, etc. They can confirm scheduling in the system. You’ll know — and the customer will know — that they’re good to go.

Effective Builder Warranty Management and Tracking

With Warranty Management, it’s remarkably easy to generate warranty work orders and schedule appointments with your homeowners, trades and suppliers. It’s also simple to track the progress of repairs through the easy-to-use dashboard. You can view details of all your submitted, acknowledged, in progress and complete work orders easily. You can even create customized alerts to know when to proactively follow up with homeowners after they move in and get settled.

Once a repair tech has completed a job, they can note it and take photos for confirmation. The homeowner can even sign off on the job with a fingertip signature on the tech’s mobile phone.

Every bit of communication is logged and tracked, creating a complete record of the job. This can be important in case of any disputes — you’ll have a thorough audit trail — and can also be used to plan future work. You can use the digital facts and reports gathered by the system to identify ways to increase efficiency and improve your service.

You can build reports, for example, to see at a glance if a particular community has a high incidence of drywall, plumbing, electrical or other specific issues. You then will be able to track those back to the subs who performed the original work or the suppliers who provided products. This can help you identify problems and avoid them in the future.

BuildPro Warranty Benefits

• Comprehensive information. Information about who did the original work, materials and colors used, etc. are at builders’ and suppliers’ fingertips. The entire life cycle of the home lives in one easy-to-access environment that includes the history of all POs, the work that was performed, documentation on building the home and servicing the warranty.
• Fewer communication errors. Information is passed from person to person — from customer to builder to supplier and back — without needing to be transposed or copied.
• Faster response. An automated process and mobile capabilities cut down the number of steps required and speed up the total response time.
• Effective crisis management. In the case of a crisis, such as Covid-19, when normal operations have been temporarily suspended, the information available in the software allows for smooth strategic planning, such as batching responses to communities for greater efficiency.
• Ongoing enhancement. Builders get regular support from Hyphen, its user’s community and Hyphen development team members who listen carefully to their feedback on how to improve systems and processes.

 Hyphen Solutions provides home builders and their building partners with industry-leading supply chain scheduling, procurement and collaboration solutions to help increase profitability. Schedule a demo today.