Report of the Consumer Committee held 10th June 2003

The Consumer Committee met on 10 June 2003. One of the items discussed was the reaction to the Board of Directors to the paper presented to it on the work of the Consumer Committee since its inception in 1998. The Board saw the Committee as a resource for the whole of the NHBC, whose advice was available for all parts of the business.

The Committee received a report on the work in progress to develop a customer satisfaction survey. The ultimate aim is to raise both the profile of and the level of satisfaction in customer service provided by house builders during the home buying process.

Mystery Shopping research has been used for some time now to identify the response of NHBC staff to telephone enquiries. The Committee was advised of the changes to the existing scenarios and new scenarios that had been written. The next round of research was shortly to be carried out and this would specifically target the level of response to voicemail messages.

The Committee discussed the NHBC website and was informed of the work planned to improve both the look of the website and the navigation around it.

The General Manager of the Claims Handling section of the business updated the Committee with some of the activities involving customer interaction under his control. These included the latest round of research carried out amongst home owners who had made claims. The results were the latest in a regular survey carried out every two years and should a continuing improvement over previous surveys. The Committee was also informed of the recommendations of the Financial Services Ombudsman (FOS) that all telephone calls would be recorded and the safeguards put in place to ensure that callers were aware of the recording.

The Committee met again on 30 September 2003 and the notes of that meeting will be posted to this website following the approval of the minutes at the meeting held on 9 December 2003.