By Jessica Meno, Raken
Subcontractors rely on communication to track the progress and productivity of projects. Unfortunately, communication challenges (or a complete lack thereof) can affect a company’s ability to foster quality customer relationships.
Engaging with customers should be a top priority. Better communication and documentation can set your projects up for success and your company apart—and win more business in the long run.
Here are four ways subcontractors can use construction technology to improve customer engagement.
1. Send timely, consistent updates
Sharing progress updates is one of the biggest challenges for subcontractors. Your crews are already busy with the build. Paper reports take up time, which means they’re likely left for the end of the day, or only happen every few days.
Field construction tech makes it easy to collect and share project data directly from the field. With more detailed, professional reports, customers can follow along with projects in real time. That means they’ll see all your team’s hard work from the start—and won’t have to spend time chasing down answers. Leverage automated reports to keep everyone in the loop, so your team can get back to what they do best.
2. Visualize progress with photos and graphs
When you’re not on the jobsite, it can be hard to see how projects are going.
Adding photos, videos, and notes to daily reports gives customers a clear picture of your progress. Comparing cost codes over time (with a graph) helps you act faster to keep projects on budget and schedule, too.
3. Automate project notifications
There’s a lot of risk in construction. That’s why it’s crucial to notify everyone as soon as something happens.
When you use construction software, not only are you collecting better insights. You can also send compliance notifications in a single click. Customers will be grateful to know about incidents automatically (and not days later).
4. Track (and document) everything up front
If there’s an unforeseen problem, construction technology can also help you track the added scope or costs. You don’t want to wait until the end of the project to communicate to customers what happened and the impact it had. After all, the sooner you share information, the less likely they’ll be surprised about it later on.
By digitally tracking everything like materials used, overtime hours, weather, and delays, your company can show organized documentation and potentially prevent litigation, too. The construction industry is all about mitigating risk—so it’s important to build a trusting relationship with customers. Improving your documentation helps increase visibility and, ultimately, trust.
5. Save everyone more time
From the field to the office, everyone stays busy. Saving time wherever possible can dramatically improve projects.
With construction tech, you can streamline project data, reduce manual entry, and get faster insights. More time back in your day means you can focus on new ways to improve—and customers can track projects at a glance. Better quality and better updates? It’s a win-win for everyone.
Improve customer engagement with Raken
Raken’s construction software lets you share field data with customers in real time. From daily progress to overall productivity, your customers will see it all with automatic, professional reports.
About the Author
Jessica Meno is a writer for Raken, the cloud-based software that was built to connect the field to the office. Raken helps boost productivity and safety by streamlining workflow processes such as daily reporting, time cards, production tracking, and safety management. Schedule a demo today to see how Raken can work for your business.
