Alair Homes Shifts Focus to Customer Experience through Avid Ratings Partnership

Award-winning Canadian builder Alair Homes wanted to improve customer experience but struggled to get candid answers from customers they surveyed informally. They also had no way to verify customer experience takeaways as reported by their 120 franchisees located throughout the U.S. and Canada.

The Alair leadership team felt that adopting a structured program through a third party might bring truth and clarity to their management of customer experience. After they discovered that Avid had a builder network and a robust system for getting the answers they needed, they adopted Avid Ratings’ AvidCX platform and mandated its utilization across all franchises in North America.

“We’re always looking to partner with best-in-breed builders and felt that Avid was in the business of helping to create these builders,” says Alair Homes COO Stu Hopewell. “So, if we wanted our franchisees to be more focused on customer experience, we needed to provide the tools that would help them get there. Avid had the toolset.”

Delivering a Consistent, Exceptional Customer Experience Across All Franchises

Hopewell notes that the Avid program has been integral in creating and formalizing processes across Alair’s 120 franchises and in holding franchisees accountable for providing an excellent customer experience. If Avid data demonstrates a sub-par customer experience, the Alair team works to bring the franchisee in question back on track. “Avid has allowed us to get inside the minds of our customers and to get a sense of our performance through their eyes. Without Avid’s tools, we’re making decisions based on what we think is happening in terms of customer experience; with Avid, we’re making decisions based on reality,” says Hopewell.

Unbiased Feedback Moves Alair Forward

The Alair team credits Avid with helping to move their company forward by facilitating candid, unbiased customer feedback. They would recommend Avid’s tools to any builder looking to improve their customer experience management. “If you’re serious about being proactive and creating change for your business – and the industry in general there aren’t many companies that can help you like Avid can,” says Hopewell. “You can try to get some customer feedback through clunky in-house programs, but you won’t get the clarity of data that can only be provided through third party separation.”

“By formalizing the feedback process through Avid, we’re now able to get a very clear picture of the experience our franchises deliver and whether our customers are truly happy…We attribute the successes we’ve been having to the awards we’ve been winning to this accountability approach, with the customer being the biggest beneficiary.” Stu Hopewell – COO