Enhancing our customer centricity

We are committed to enhancing customer centricity and considering our customers’ needs at all stages of their engagement with us. Three engagement methods that underpin our customer focus include:

• development of our own research community, Stockland Exchange
• incorporating customer immersion workshops early in our development process
• launch of Stockland Listens customer immersion program.

We set up Stockland Exchange almost five years ago and today we have over 5,500 members who are residents, prospective residents and shoppers. We use this community to reach out to customers and get their feedback on a range of different issues. This provides us with a quick and cost-effective means of engaging with our customers and acting on their feedback. 

Some examples of how we have used the Stockland Exchange include:

• testing new ideas and initiatives
• voting on community names
• feedback on future parks
• input into future town centres
• positioning of and communication about our communities.

We are increasing our use of customer immersion workshops in our development planning. The workshops involve engaging prospective customers for feedback on our initial design plans, floor plans and marketing which inform early planning and development of our new communities. Different functions across our business interact directly with customers and share insights with the whole project team. In this way, we are better able to identify potential issues early on and put the customer at the heart of our project team’s decision-making, ultimately leading to a better outcome.

Stockland Listens was launched this year to make it easy for staff within our Residential business to connect with, listen to, and learn from our customers. Customers attend staff meetings in each state and share their home buying stories. Listening to their feedback generates ideas from staff on improving the customer experience, which are collected and prioritised by team leaders for implementation. Staff also listen in with our contact centre to hear phone calls and discuss improvement opportunities with front line staff. We are already actioning two major initiatives as a result of Stockland Listens, and have a pipeline of ideas under consideration by our Customer Experience team.

Over 250 of our people have engaged with Stockland Listens to date, and the program will be extended to all business units in FY19 and become part of our normal operating rhythm.