As a home builder, you regularly look for ways to reduce your overall costs and improve your workforce management, creating a better flow. Fortunately, modern technology has stepped up to the plate, providing solutions that allow you to reduce man-hours while providing a higher standard of service to your customers.
Your AI chatbot isn’t just a fun addition to your website! It’s a powerful tool that has the potential to transform how you do business. Take a look at how you can make the most of a conversational AI chatbot for home builders to improve workforce management and reduce costs.
1. Automate Repetitive Tasks
AI is ideal for managing repetitive tasks that take up unnecessary time and energy for your in-house workers. An AI-powered digital assistant can handle many of the tasks that previously required a human touch.
Scheduling
Your AI-powered digital assistant can take on many essential scheduling tasks across your organization. They can:
- Schedule meetings based on calendar availability for all participants.
- Schedule appointments for contractors to meet with interested customers in person.
- Manage employee schedules.
- Navigate project scheduling.
With help from your digital assistant, you can improve workforce management. The technology allows you to easily keep up with all those scheduling requirements, including adjusting projects and employee hours as complications arise or materials arrive.
Data Entry
You may spend a great deal of time managing basic data entry tasks, whether it’s managing project data entry or putting together materials lists. Your AI-powered digital assistant can help with many of those tasks, transmitting your data from one platform to another and checking it for inaccuracies.
Not only can you save time—and therefore reduce labor costs—by having AI take on those tasks, you may find that it increases accuracy. More accurate estimates, tax documents, and other financial information can improve workforce management and save your homebuilding business considerable money in the long run.
Email Management
As a home builder, you don’t have time to be tied to your email. Fortunately, your AI-powered digital assistant can help manage your inbox, filtering them, sorting them, and even prioritizing the ones that need your attention sooner. Thanks to your digital assistant, you can clear the mess out of your inbox while keeping your focus on running your business.
2. Plan Staffing Needs More Effectively
As a home builder, you face unique workforce management challenges. Unlike many businesses, the number of employees you need can change dramatically based on the number of projects you have. With an AI-powered digital assistant, you can plan your staffing needs more effectively. Workforce management benefits include:
- Making sure that you have a licensed individual on-site for all important aspects of your project, whether you need an electrician, a plumber, or a general contractor.
- Calculating the right number of construction workers for each type of project.
- Providing the hours employees need, or dividing hours fairly when available.
- Calculating the potential overtime requirements of each project.
Your AI-powered digital assistant can even help with overtime workforce management, decreasing the odds that employees will burn out or be unable to fulfill their responsibilities. Furthermore, it can help you schedule projects effectively, based on the builders you have available. AI tools can even determine which workers are needed for a specific project so that you have the right ones on site when you’re ready to take on specific elements of the project.
3. Manage Basic Customer Inquiries
You make a number of connections with your customers as they select the services they need and choose your brand for their project. A key part of that process is providing customers with access to the information they need in order to make a decision.
Your AI chatbot is ideal for handling many of those inquiries. While a chatbot may not be able to provide specific pricing information due to the variations in each project, it can provide information about many questions many people may have before launching a homebuilding project. Chatbots can answer many of your frequently asked questions, including things like:
- How long does it take to build a house?
- How long does it take to complete specific renovation projects (bathroom, kitchen, garage, etc)?
- How do you communicate with clients during your project?
- What licensing and insurance do you have?
- What work have you completed in the past?
- What warranties are offered on your construction?
- What happens if customers have a problem after construction is complete?
You can also use your AI-powered chatbot to answer customers’ most common questions about specific types of projects, from the materials that are most likely to fit specific needs to the energy-saving solutions you may offer for specific upgrades or homes. If you are working on a new neighborhood or community, your chatbot can provide more information about it, from the amenities available in the community to the timeline for having homes completed.
All this communication streamlines workforce management since it does not require a “real” person. By turning these elements over to a chatbot, you get several cost-saving advantages. Not only does it cut down on the need for customer service representatives, but it also ensures that you are able to connect with customers at any time—including the times that are most convenient for their schedules and needs. Since your chatbot is always present, customers get the answers they need when they need them.
4. Get More Data-Driven Insights
Data is a critical part of more businesses than ever before—and your homebuilding brand is no exception. Your AI digital assistant can collect and analyze a great deal of data for you.
Market Trends
With insights gathered from customers and competitors, AI can predict a wide range of trends. Not only can it take into account things like what customers are currently purchasing, but it can also examine the things that are likely to influence customer behavior: the state of the economy, weather patterns, and even popular things in culture.
With these insights, your brand can better stay on top of those trends, whether that means incorporating them into the designs of your houses or ensuring that you have the right materials on hand for the projects customers are most likely to want.
Customer Journey
Paying attention to the customer journey is critical. You need to know what customers are looking for at each stage of the journey as they connect with your brand. That includes what questions they’re asking, what information they’re looking for, and how specific communications at each stage may influence their desire to connect with you. Your AI digital assistant can provide you with those essential insights so that you can tailor your communications and content to those needs in the future.
Budget Analysis
Keeping your projects on budget is an essential part of meeting your project goals and customer needs. You don’t want to overprice your projects, since that will often mean losing out to competitors, but you do want to make sure that you’ve included overhead and profit in your estimates. Your digital assistant can help you with budget analysis, including offering the information you need to make changes to your pricing.
This information can prove particularly critical in a volatile market, when it can be difficult to predict project costs ahead of time.
Cost Management
In addition to tracking your budget and helping you set estimates for a project, you may need help with overall cost management. That can include comparing prices from subcontractors or suppliers, offering suggestions that can cut down time spent on projects, or simply tracking expenses to find areas to optimize.
5. Allow AI To Help With Project Management
AI is ideal for many of your project management needs—which means you can free up project managers to take on the tasks that require a human touch. As a result, workforce management is streamlined even more. AI can:
- Track the labor hours needed for each project, allowing you to keep each one on track (and adapt future labor needs).
- Monitor progress toward specific milestones to ensure that the project is meeting deadline goals.
- Evaluate productivity on each project to identify potential challenges.
By letting AI take on those project management tasks, you can often avoid hiring new employees when scaling your brand, allowing you to get the results you need in-office without increasing your expenses.
6. Improve Regulatory Compliance and Oversight
As a home builder, you must keep up with a wide range of regulatory requirements. Each project you take on must meet vital regulations—and they can vary based on where the project takes place. Fortunately, you no longer need human workers to look up those regulations and ensure that your project meets requirements. This improvement in workforce management also improves accuracy and lowers the risk of non-compliance. AI-powered digital assistants can:
- Look up regulatory information for specific locales, including state and city-level requirements.
- Provide information about building codes.
- Reference any requirements for historic buildings or specific neighborhoods.
- Make sure that each project complies with those regulations.
Using an AI-powered digital assistant helps you avoid costly fines and penalties for failing to remain in compliance while reducing your overall workforce costs.
Add AI to Your Workforce Management Toolbox
As a home builder, you have a variety of tools at your disposal. Add an AI-powered digital assistant to your toolbox and see the advantages it can bring to your brand, including helping you reduce overall costs and streamline workforce management. At Verse, we have tools designed with homebuilder brands in mind. Contact us today to learn more.
