An intelligent system to manage after-sales service in residential construction

TECNALIA develops an intelligent system to optimise the management of after-sales service in residential construction

Construcciones Olabarri and the software development company Ukabi collaborated to develop this innovative solution, which is based around a customer-oriented collaborative platform, and has already been used for the after-sales management of a building constructed in a town in the province of Gipuzkoa.

September 2024. Construction and development companies are obliged to provide end users with an after-sales service to manage complaints and solve possible faults detected within the guarantee period in the buildings once they have been handed over, in accordance with the Planning and Building Act. In many cases, managing these complaints can involve a high cost for the company, both in terms of the repairs required and the time consumed in managing complaints.

For customers, who have made a large investment and put a lot at stake in buying their home, the complaints process can be very worrying if they feel that their complaint is not being dealt with effectively. The quality of the after-sales service provided can make a difference to customer satisfaction.

• The TECNALIA innovation and technological development centre, in collaboration with Construcciones Olabarri and the software development company Ukabi, has developed an intelligent system for optimising after-sales management in residential construction.
• Construcciones Olabarri contributed its knowledge to the project of incident management during the guarantee period and implemented a pilot project to validate the platform. In fact, they are already using it in a housing development (in Orio, Gipuzkoa), the results of which can be extrapolated to some of its own developments and to homes it builds for public and private customers.

The incident management platform, SINTOP, allows incidents to be recorded in the after-sales phase in real time. At the same time, it structures information so that it can be analysed and managed in an intelligent way, with the aim of improving and optimising customer service. The platform also drastically reduces service and support times.

Benefits of the platform

This platform improves business processes in two areas.

• Firstly, it centralises the input of incidents, thereby eliminating the need to manage calls, SMS, WhatsApp messages or emails separately.  Using the platform as a single communication channel for logging incidents ensures the availability of the minimum data required for logging, thereby reducing situations where there is missing information, while allowing the end user or owner to easily log their own incidents and track the process.
• Secondly, the SINTOP platform optimises incident assessment and minimises the need for in-person visits by using the data uploaded to the platform, such as images and location details on the map. This makes it possible to assess incidents without having to carry out on-site inspections. Once incidents have been analysed by a technician, rejected incidents are discarded and those that are accepted trigger the resolution processes. The platform automatically assigns a person who will be responsible for resolving each incident and notifies them of their tasks, thereby ensuring that the management process is agile and efficient. In terms of indicators, Construcciones Olabarri's technicians can look at various metrics to identify elements and locations with the highest frequency of incidents.

Improving the after-sales process brings major advantages for construction companies in terms of productivity, coupled with an increase in end-user satisfaction. The involvement of the homeowner in providing input into the system and the possibility of monitoring the status of incidents improves the perception of transparency in the management process and builds customer confidence, while raising awareness of how the maintenance of their home is managed.

• Moreover, the information on incidents in the works managed by the company, duly organised and analysed, has great potential in terms of establishing patterns of behaviour (frequencies, elements affected, source of damage, extent of pathologies). This allows Construcciones Olabarri to learn from its mistakes and adopt preventive measures to minimise incidents in future works, thereby improving the quality of its buildings and providing a better service to end users.

Results obtained using the SINTOP web-based incident management platform

The results obtained so far with the SINTOP incident management web platform are promising and have encouraged Construcciones Olabarri to continue to develop it and extend it to other types of works.

• Savings in incident response times.
• Improvement in the quality of the after-sales service of buildings.
• Improvement in the quality of services provided by the trades.
• Improvement in customer satisfaction