Luxury homes should come with a luxury customer journey
“We don’t want to sell you a £750,000 house and then leave you out in the cold”
To say GLAM Living’s name is aptly chosen is an understatement. The homebuilder from Yorkshire doesn’t just build houses; they build glamorous homes that fit each homebuyer’s lifestyle. Working with top-notch designers, GLAM Living creates beautiful builds for people looking for the best of the best. “We offer a level of luxury that many people normally wouldn’t have access to,” says GLAM Living co-owner Chris Carmichael. “We bring first-class suppliers and designers to the general public.” But the luxury doesn’t only apply to the homes; Chris is adamant that his homebuyers should get an equally luxurious customer experience.
Matching the level of customer experience to the high-end homes GLAM Living offers has always been important for Chris Carmichael. “We don’t want to sell you a £750,000 house and then leave you out in the cold,” he says. “We want to be there for our homebuyers throughout the building process, even helping them decide what colour their living room walls should be or which tiles go well with their kitchen style. I’ve even gone out and searched for the perfect door handle for one homebuyer once.”
Increase efficiency, reduce human error
But keeping up with construction and going the extra mile for homebuyers isn’t an easy combination. “We tried to do everything on our own for a while, but it wasn’t as professional as we wanted it to be. There’s only four of us in our team, so bringing that whole homebuyer journey together and doing it well, was difficult”, Chris admits. Since Chris wasn’t really up for hiring more people — “I like the fact that our team’s so small” — he started building his own online customer journey platform in the hope he could streamline the whole process.
"However", Chris says, “I wasted a lot of time and money on that project. I’m a housebuilder, not a software builder. I could never get it quite right, or it would’ve cost me too many resources.” He knew exactly what he wanted, though: “I wanted to increase our efficiency and reduce human errors. If people pay the amount of money our houses cost, you don’t want to paint their kitchen the wrong colour. You don’t want to miss an email where they’ve asked an urgent question. You also don’t want to rush them to decide on their bathroom sink because you forgot to give them a deadline.”
"We want them to see we’re organised and allow them to be in control of their own home"
Worry-free journey
He eventually found what he was looking for in Ziggu. “These guys know what they’re doing, so it made more sense to ditch our own project and go into business with them,” Chris says. “Ziggu’s homebuyer portal allows us to streamline everything. It helps us keep up with document control — which, as every homebuilder will know, is not an easy task —, everyone involved has the correct information at all times, and it’s just easier to involve homebuyers in the project.” Chris laughs: “I said I didn’t want to hire an extra employee, but it turns out we did because Ziggu is the ideal new team member for us.”
As for the homebuyers, Chris believes that by using Ziggu, they’ll go through the building process more worry-free. “We want to show them that we’re thinking about their experience and not just forcing them to choose this or buy that. We want them to see we’re organised and allow them to be in control of their own home,” Chris says. “I’m sure that such a level of transparency gives people some peace of mind regarding the biggest purchase of their life. We want people to enjoy the process as much as they enjoy their home once it’s finished. That’s the premium experience GLAM Living strives for and the kind we can give them with Ziggu’s homebuyer platform.”
