327 Delivering a Seamless Customer Experience - Fernanda Luick Jul 8 2026

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode of the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And today we are excited to have joining us Fernanda Luick. Fernanda is the president of Fernanda Luik Consulting. Welcome, and thanks for being with us today.

Fernanda Luick: Thank you. Thank you, Greg, and thank you, Kevin. I appreciate the introduction.

Greg Bray: Well, let's start off by just getting to know a little bit more about you. Give us [00:01:00] that quick background and overview about some of the things you've been doing lately.

Fernanda Luick: Well, I was introduced to customer experience in the building industry back in 1990 when I joined National Survey Systems then. Changed the name to Eliant, back a few years ago. I moved up in the ranks. I started as a receptionist back in 1990 and became president of Eliant in 2019, so had a incredible career run at Eliant.

Kevin Weitzel: All right, before we get into a little bit more could you please tell us an interesting factoid about yourself that our listeners will learn that has nothing to do with work, home life, family. What do you got?

Fernanda Luick: All right, so fun fact about me is I am from Argentina. Moved here in 1988, and one of my passions in Argentina was... Are you ready? I'm a bike chick. I used to love motorcycle riding. I grew up in a beach town, and back then, being that it was a [00:02:00] small town, all the kids, all the teenagers, you know, we couldn't afford a car, so most of us would ride a bike, and my bike was my precious treasure. I used to ride in my, listen to this, Kawasaki, blue Kawasaki, 250cc's, and cruise around the coast of Argentina.

Kevin Weitzel: That was in the '80s?

Fernanda Luick: That was in the '80s, yes.

Kevin Weitzel: Okay. So back then, that was at the peak of all the Japanese invasion of all the bikes that were coming in, that were taking over in the mid and small line bikes, like Triumph and stuff like that. They were taking over those brands. And then in the large scale, obviously, they were coming over and trying to take over Harley's business. But in a lot of Latin American countries, Harley didn't even take off until another decade later. So, it's kind of cool to see and hear that that's something you got to do. Being a motorcycle enthusiast myself, that's a period in history that a lot of people have almost forgotten about. It's pretty cool.

Fernanda Luick: Yeah. The best part about that is that we did not [00:03:00] see any Harley-Davidsons in my town. But we were allowed to ride bikes without helmets, and you can feel the wind going through your face and your hair, and it was the best experience ever.

Kevin Weitzel: That's cool.

Greg Bray: I was just wondering if you picked that because you knew Kevin was that into bikes.

Fernanda Luick: I actually had no idea. We have that in common now, Kevin, yes.

Kevin Weitzel: I've had 21 motorcycles and six Vespa scooters. I was riding as early as seven, I think. Bikes way too big for me. Like, not safe at all. Uh, again, also without helmets, you know. It's just the way it was back then. But yeah, no, that's awesome.

Fernanda Luick: Very cool. I miss it. You know, I wouldn't ride a bike here, especially in California. Traffic is crazy, and it is not safe.

Greg Bray: Well, Fernanda, tell us a little bit more about your new company, because you mentioned Eliant and some of your time there. But you're doing something new, so tell us a little bit about what you're offering and the kinds of services you're putting out there.

Fernanda Luick: Yes. Thank you, Greg. So, as president of Eliant, I was in [00:04:00] management of Eliant for the last 25 years. I was involved in client relations, leadership alignment, and doing all the fun work to help all builder clients of all sizes, custom builders, 50 homes a year, to private builders, over 15,000 closings a year. My role was to help the builder align the customer experience process to make sure that the homebuyer feels elated through the entire process, not just at the beginning of the process.

Conducted a lot of workshops. My forte was getting into a builder, bringing all the teams together, all the executive management together, field representatives, and then hearing really from the field what are the frustrations, what are the things that are working in the field, and basically help the builder line up all the different milestones on the journey for a delightful experience from beginning to end.

So, in my [00:05:00] new company, my offering, my services is going to continue to assist builders that are needing to either develop, enhance, or continue to provide great experiences to these homebuyers.

Greg Bray: So, when you talk about experience, what is included? Because I think sometimes people think of experience as the purchase, the sales process. But what you described sounds a little bit broader than that. Take us a little deeper.

Fernanda Luick: Yeah, the experience happens not just at the beginning of the process. So, the experience starts from the prospect, whether it be somebody visiting a website or looking at a promotion or looking at a sign to go in and look at the model homes. It starts right there. And then it goes all the way through the first year of ownership and beyond. But at Eliant, we measure the first year of ownership that you can break it into different milestones.

You know, of course, it starts at the visit. You know, shopper surveys are really popular. Exit surveys are really popular to then [00:06:00] collect information. But the communication and the message across all departments then becomes really, really key. The sales team might be saying something different than construction, design, and then customer service. So, the idea is to unify a message and create a cohesive offering from beginning to end.

Greg Bray: So, when you do those kinds of surveys and get the feedback from buyers and customers, is there a common area in that whole journey where lots of builders seem to stumble a little bit more than other areas where maybe things kind of don't go the way everybody wants them to?

Fernanda Luick: Absolutely. So, when I was involved at Eliant, we would measure the initial purchase experience, and then we would see that a lot of the builders would perform really well at the beginning of the process. But then through warranty and the first year of ownership, there's a decline in performance, and there's a decline [00:07:00] on continuity with providing that service. So, the homebuyer feels a little bit abandoned. There's a lot of interaction, a lot of people that are involved at the beginning of the process, as I mentioned, but then throughout the mid-year and the year-end, there's a lot less interactions and a lot less communication.

Kevin Weitzel: So, in this process, people can either be elated or they can be annoyed, but ultimately they're buying their dream home. So, there's going to be a certain level of happiness regardless, even with the stress that comes with it. My question is, is how do you convert a buyer into an elated megaphone for your company? Is it just as simple as just asking them? Because, you know, it was a late delivery or the house was delivered unclean, they're always willing to post something socially that said, "This experience was horrible." However, the positive experiences, it almost seems like they're canned. How do you get that person to give that genuine response in basically an advertisement for the builder themselves?

Fernanda Luick: [00:08:00] Yeah, this is such a key question, and when I work with marketers, that is their main question. It's not a one shot answer. It involves multiple steps and multiple people. So, number one, it starts with sales and marketing. You know, are we including appropriate information? Are we setting the right expectations from the beginning of the process, or are we setting up construction and customer service up for failure by making promises that are not going to be delivered or delivered late?

So, in order to generate this satisfied customers and elated customers that are going to go out of their way to promote a brand or to promote a builder, there are certain behaviors throughout each department that need to be observed and implemented. Proactive communication cannot be overstated. And I know a lot of people say, you know, "Yeah, we proactively communicate," but what does that really mean? Does it mean that we're returning a phone call? Does it mean that we answer all the questions in a timely manner? Proactive communication is not that.

Proactive [00:09:00] communication is anticipating that somebody might need information and then providing that information. It is going out of your way to prove and show to the customer that you got their back. You know, we're trying to create this trust between representatives throughout the entire process and the home buyer. If a process doesn't go that great, if there's a hiccup, if there's a delay, and a representative goes out of their way to show that they care, that they're keeping them informed, that creates a relationship with the customer that creates trust, and trust then will turn around and serve as a promoter.

So, throughout the first year of ownership, we see that there's more promoters, if you will, the net promoters or the willingness to recommend that happens at the beginning of the process, as I mentioned earlier, and then the torch gets passed on to customer service. And in my experience in working with several builders, there's some customer experience that go above and beyond [00:10:00] their duty to make sure that they take care of their customers. They go knocking on doors, they're like, "You know, I'm in the neighborhood. Is there anything that I can do for you today? Did you have any questions?" And at that point, you know, you create this loyalty with the builder and the homeowner that the builder is not just closing and done, and then somebody is taking care of them.

Two-part answer, the second part of the answer is builders' representatives have to be involved in the survey process, collecting the information, whichever survey partner you're working with. Because if you're not, then you're not understanding, you know, what's going on out in the field, you're not understanding the entire process. The encouragement of survey participation then lies on those field representatives to make sure that everybody looks at the information, looks at the feedback, and are able to then process survey comments, which are really critical, to be able to understand, you know, what are some of [00:11:00] the things that need to be adjusted and changed, and patterns of whether it be a process. Are we having a process problem? Are we having a performance problem, or is it the trades? Is it the product? So to be able to understand that then becomes key. How we get high net promoters is by soliciting and making sure that everybody's engaged in the program.

And one fun fact that I want to share is those customers that are very dissatisfied, guess what? Are the first ones that are going to return that survey. But also the ones that are extremely satisfied, those delighted customers are going to be the ones second to respond to the survey. So, the idea is to get the ones that are in the middle, the ones that they got what they expected that they're going to get from the builder and from the reps, because there's a lot more information that the builder can learn and work with when you get some of those comments.

Greg Bray: So, you talked [00:12:00] about setting expectations and that gap. We get disappointed when our expectations aren't met, and often it's marketing and sales that are setting expectations. How do you deal with that tension for sales that's like, "Well, gosh, if I tell them it's going to take six months for this house to get built, then they're never going to buy it, you know?

So, I'm going to say, "Oh, we can probably get it done in three months." But then, you know, construction's back here going, "No, you just sold five more. There's no way we can get all these done in the time that you promised." How do you negotiate those types of internal challenges and make sure that the customer's being given the right information?

Fernanda Luick: One of my best and favorite things to do is coaching community teams, and community teams involves every single representative, you know, sales managers and sales teams, construction, customer service. Designers. Let's not forget about our designers. We all know that sales teams are notorious for making promises because [00:13:00] they're pleasers, right? Sales teams are pleasers. They want to satisfy the customer. They want to tell them everything that they want to hear, but that unfortunately does not work for the rest of the team.

It's better to be transparent and to work with the construction team to create a timeline that everybody agrees on and everybody is talking from the same talking point. So, to create what we call a promise list or to create a list of questions and answers that everybody in the team agrees then becomes really important. That's when we would not have a misalignment of expectations.

Greg Bray: So, when is the right time to ask those buyers for the feedback along that journey? You mentioned the surveys and getting that information, but when should we be asking for that?

Fernanda Luick: I like the asking of the question at the new home orientation. I like asking the question at mid construction, but those are homebuyers that already purchased. And then another one, we had a client that had [00:14:00] a new home sales online to be able to determine if the online sales advisor did an adequate and good job at setting up the tour information, then going in and visiting the different homes. Because we need to learn, you know, what is bringing you to these homes.

And once we understand, is it the amenities, is it the home, is it the location? You know, what are some of the key things that are bringing you to our homes, and what other homes are you looking at? What other builders are you looking at? I think that in my opinion, that's the beginning of the process for the builder to understand and to have the marketing team and the sales team be able to use that information for a more targeted type of promotion.

In my opinion, some builders, especially the large ones, like to do a one-question after event, which doesn't give you the full picture. Meaning, like, we meet with a sales team, now we're going to send them a one sales question. We meet with a designer, we're going to send you the one sales question. I think that those are isolated and doesn't really give you the full picture of the purchase [00:15:00] experience. I like the model of, you know, 30 days after move in, now that your boxes are almost unpacked or you're already moved in, tell us about your experience. You know, reflect on how was your experience with the sales team, how was your experience with the design center and construction, and so forth.

So, a combination of different evaluations throughout, but I think that as we all know, consumers are being over-evaluated. You know, people have an apprehension of surveys if there are too many in the sequence. But in my opinion, and in my tenure at Eliant, you know, we got incredible response rates. We would get like 65% response rates, which tell you two things. One is that the builder is really involved in talking about the program and the surveys. And then the second thing is, you know, somebody making this incredible purchase, they want to give you their feedback. They want to tell you how the process went.

Greg Bray: Hey everybody, this is Greg Bray from Blue Tangerine, and I am so excited to let you know that the registration is now open for the twenty twenty-six Builder Marketing Summit. We're gonna be in Dallas, Texas this year on September twenty-third and twenty-fourth, and we are working on an amazing lineup of marketing, OS, and leadership content for you.

Please check it out at buildermarketingsummit.com and get your registration in today. Remember, there's limited seats available, so don't miss out. Again, buildermarketingsummit.com. Can't wait to see you there.

Kevin Weitzel: [00:16:00] So, let me ask you this, because this one always bothered me whenever, you know, you'd fill out a survey and then you don't see any changes.

Fernanda Luick: Mm-hmm.

Kevin Weitzel: Why is it that so many, I'm not even going to say builders, just entities that put out surveys that receive feedback, do they not put that into action to change their business?

Fernanda Luick: That's such a great question, and I get asked that question quite often, Kevin, to be honest with you. One is because some builders are just looking for that check mark. [00:17:00] We care about our customer. We have a customer experience program, check mark. Other builders, leadership is not involved in the program at all. They appoint somebody. I had a few builders that had the HR director be in charge of the customer experience. That's not very effective. To have the right person be in charge of the program and set accountability with the rest of the management teams from the other departments, then becomes really key. So, having the right person in place, but leadership needs to be involved every step of the way.

My best example is, you know, one builder where the president would get copies of every single survey, and he would then send kudos to the team member, to the sales, you know, team, or to the construction representative to say, "Hey, congratulations on a great survey." And what that does, Kevin, is it makes the field team understand that leadership is watching, [00:18:00] that it is important for management to have a pulse on the customer experience. If leadership does not get involved and nobody's watching, you know, this is kind of like school and grades. If you don't get a grade and nobody's watching, then you're not gonna act on it.

Greg Bray: So, Fernanda, to that then, who should own it? Not the HR director. Who owns customer experience? Ideally, okay, the owner or president, but you know, they've got a couple other things they got to worry about too. Where does it sit best in the structure, typically?

Fernanda Luick: Yeah. So, most of the key contacts and people that are in charge of customer experience are VP of customer experience, VP of customer service and operations. I've had in the small builder, yeah, there's a couple of presidents, but for the most part I'm going to say VP of customer service. The new thing that I'm noticing is in the last five years, there's a new role being created by the large builders, VP of customer [00:19:00] experiences. So, at the corporate level then they're in charge and they own customer experiences to then be able to work with each individual division to have a common theme and a common plan that creates that consistency for the company.

Greg Bray: So, we've got surveys coming, we've got data, we're looking at it, we're trying to react to it. What are the right kinds of questions that should be asked, that are really going to make a difference? I mean, did you have a good experience? Oh, sure. You know, but what do I do with that, right? There's got to be something that's a little more actionable. What are the right kinds of questions?

Fernanda Luick: Great question. Back in the day, we used to have 120 questions on each one of the evaluations, and we trimmed that consistently.

Greg Bray: Wait, wait, you said 120 questions?

Fernanda Luick: Yeah, 120 questions.

Greg Bray: And people filled that out?

Fernanda Luick: And people filled that out, believe it or not. Yes. I remember when there were the paper surveys, they would fill it out as well. Lots of questions, and there were a lot of [00:20:00] unnecessary questions. You know, there are the nice-to-know questions, there's the actionable questions, and then there's the questions that have to do with process. The questions that are more efficient are about the experience, overall experience, yes, is important, but specifically to each department. Did they explain the process the right way? How did they make me feel? So, trust, loyalty, and how did you make me feel, all that becomes part of the experience.

Because at this point, home buyers expect a quality home. They go in, they look at the home, they look at reviews. It's the first thing that most people do is look at reviews. So, creating a great experience on how you made them feel through the process. Did you address the anxieties? And the ultimate question, am I willing to recommend, then becomes that NPS measurement. So, questions about behavior, questions about process. Did they explain? Did they make me feel like a valued [00:21:00] customer? Do I believe that the builder has my back if there's a problem? And ultimately, am I willing to recommend? Those are the questions.

Greg Bray: For a builder who's a little bit smaller and isn't selling a home every day. How do we not allow that one grouchy customer to over-influence the data, so to speak, and maybe send us down a path that is just a little bit unique just because of this person?

Fernanda Luick: Yeah. So, that's such a great questio. In my experience, I've had those scenarios where, you know, a builder of fifty homes a year, let's just say they get sixty percent, you know, return, they're going to get, what, thirty surveys somewhere around ballpark. So, every survey counts. I think that we have to remove the idea of perfection. You know, you are going to have those customers that no matter what you do, you're never going to satisfy them. We have a statistic that we run and [00:22:00] some regression that will show us that every single builder out there, there's a two to five percent of all their customers that no matter what you do, you cannot satisfy.

But the other thing, you know, to make sure that we understand this, even if somebody had a bad experience at the beginning of the process or not a stellar experience at the beginning of the process, you can turn around a customer by understanding what were the things that didn't work out for them. So, the opportunity then becomes at the mid-year point and at the year-end point, and I've seen that. I've seen that happen, where a builder took firsthand interest in understanding what were some of the things that didn't work out and were able to convert a dissatisfied customer into a satisfied customer, by taking those steps. So, learning the hiccups is one, understanding, what can you do to turn around this customer and then acting on that.

Kevin Weitzel: How about this? And I ask this a little bit, tongue in cheek, and a little bit in jest. But [00:23:00] when you do get that Karen, let's call it Karen. When you get that Karen that's just never going to be happy no matter what you do, is it ever appropriate to say, "You know, Karen, I understand where you're coming from, and I get your frustration with that. But you are aware that you are absolutely insane and crazy." Is it okay to ever say that because I want to so often. Is it ever okay to do that, or is that just frowned upon?

Fernanda Luick: You probably shouldn't do that. But what I've heard builders do is they would invite the homeowner to cancel the contract because it's not a good fit, and you know, I'm afraid I'm never gonna be able to satisfy you. I invite you to maybe look at other communities or a place that you can call home that would satisfy, you know, your needs. And I've seen that happen.

Kevin Weitzel: I'd be curious to know of the times they offer, how often people backpedal. "Oh, yeah. You know, uh, no, I think it'll be okay. I'll be able to deal with X, Y, or Z."

Fernanda Luick: Some have done that. But what I've heard, you know, from my clients, yes, they will take them up on that [00:24:00] and just move on.

Kevin Weitzel: Really? Okay.

Fernanda Luick: And the builder is happy to get rid of that headache. The builder is happy. Because, you know, the underlying line there would be that they're already thinking, "Here is another lawsuit waiting to happen if you already have somebody at the beginning of the process that is this dissatisfied, has given us so much headache. The builder, usually for those customers that are never satisfied, they put so much more work than anybody else.They put all their resources, they do all the work, they spend all the money, and still nothing that they do can satisfy them.

Greg Bray: So, Fernanda, we talked a little bit about the small builder and the influence of one grouchy customer. What about the really large builder that's trying to give this personal service, but there's just a lot of people? What are some ways that they can still keep that feeling very personal, but yet recognize that maybe they need to use some tools to help automate pieces of it or to kind of track what's going on? What are your suggestions there?

Fernanda Luick: Yeah, you'd be surprised, even the [00:25:00] large builders, the multidivisional builders that have employed and have sophisticated customer experience journeys laid out, they have a really great way of, and I'm thinking of one in particular, great ways of giving that ownership to the customer service field personnel. So, even though they're large, the empowerment and each one of the representatives owns a group of homeowners that they're taking care of. Through getting copies of their surveys or utilizing an app that would give them specific information about the interaction with other representatives that have worked with this one homeowner, they are able to very efficiently and effectively, use those tools to communicate just as the small builder would. Yeah, they might have more homes, but there's tools out there that can help make this more efficient.

Greg Bray: You know, Kevin, in the past I've had builders come to me and say, "Hey, you know, when people search for us, our SEO, there's [00:26:00] these bad reviews showing up in our search. How can we get rid of those?" And I want to say, "Well, fix your warranty process." It's not an SEO issue, it's the fact that you got unhappy customers at the end. Fernanda, where is the role of marketing saying, "Hey guys, we're having this issue because when people look for us, there's these bad messages out there and we need your help to make these customers say nice things about us"?

Fernanda Luick: Right. Right. Well, I was actually involved in the development of the reviews platform for Eliant, so I have a special spot in my heart for marketing. I work with a lot of marketing team members. And one of the products that they have is the reviews that come straight from the survey. So, a homeowner gets asked towards the end of the survey, "Hey, do you give the builder permission to use your ratings and your comments for their social media", meaning the builder. And those who said yes, that information gets pushed to reviews.

Any other survey platform, I'm sure, will [00:27:00] have something like that where the homeowner will give you permission to use their comments for the builder's social media. Let's use that. I think that that's important to use that information because in my experience, when you're looking at Yelp, you're looking at BBB, you're looking at Google Reviews, you have 35 reviews at 3.5, you know, 35 customers versus when you kind of use the survey platform to kind push the real homeowners' comments. You may have hundreds or thousands that would overshadow the small review from Yelp, for instance.

In my opinion, you know, working with the right marketing, working with the right team members from the survey partner that a builder may have can really leverage off those comments that are invaluable. That's the answer, is to overshadow a more rounded and true picture of the experience that the builder had with real homeowners than those miscellaneous ones and twos that, [00:28:00] of course, somebody who's going to go to Yelp or Google, those are the disgruntled for the most part homeowners. And in some cases, even people that never even purchased a home.

Greg Bray: It's amazing how angry people can get sometimes.

Fernanda Luick: Especially if they're trying to get something from the builder, yes.

Greg Bray: Yeah. And in today's world with the AI searches that are happening now, sometimes these random small reviews that don't even show up in a traditional Google search are suddenly getting pulled in to some of that knowledge and influencing those recommendations, which is a little scary and unfair if you're not balancing that out.

Well, Fernanda, this has been really great. If there's somebody out there who's like, "Okay, we need to do a better job. We need to improve our customer experience. We're going to start," what is the place to begin? If you have to pick a starting point, where do you even begin to try and improve customer experience?

Fernanda Luick: Well, if they're going to be contacting me, I think that the number one thing is just to set up a meeting, and then I would love to just talk to management and leadership and look at the [00:29:00] goals and look at the current scores of, you know, whoever they're using as their survey partner. I love digging into comments. Comments are just incredible. Homeowners have no issue telling you how they feel, and I think that there's so much information there to address. And I think that my key three things are, do we have a performance issue, do we have a product issue? You know, what are some of the things that we can address and putting up a plan. Would love the opportunity to work with a builder that has those needs and has the desires to improve the score, and ultimately, their net promoters on willing-ness to recommend.

Greg Bray: Any last thoughts or words of advice you want to leave today about customer experience?

Fernanda Luick: Yes, for sure. Customer experience is not a check mark, or checking a box for home builders. Homeowners are expecting more and more every day. In my opinion, customer experience starts in the field. It starts with listening to your [00:30:00] team members, empowering your team members, especially customer-facing employees that know what's going on in the field, and really listening to your customers and implementing some of the suggestions that they're telling you through these surveys. What are some of the things that are working and some of the things that are not working?

Greg Bray: Well, Fernanda, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Fernanda Luick: They can, uh, go to my website, fernandaluick.com, or my phone number 949-337-0348.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us today, and thank you everybody for listening to the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you. [00:31:00]