The DFH GROUP, with its three brands massa haus, allkauf, and OKAL, is the largest prefabricated house construction company in Germany. It builds more than 3,200 prefabricated houses a year, meeting environmental, social, and economic requirements and offering everything from basic shell houses to turnkey dream homes.
At a glance
- MVP launched after only three months
- Enhanced customer satisfaction & improved quality of service
- 1,600 satisfied customers already actively use the self-service portal
- Maximum legal certainty through transparent document management
Initial situation
Modern construction projects are completed within ever shorter periods. This involves producing prefabricated houses in sections in the factory and then erecting the house on site within 1-2 days. Work on the interior can start immediately afterwards.
At the same time, the legal requirements governing the entire planning and implementation process have increased significantly. Under new building regulations, for example, services must be described in detail and all relevant building documents must be handed over to future homeowners. A key factor for success here is a smooth flow of information between the future homeowners, the site manager, the suppliers, and the tradespeople. The interest in digitalizing this collaboration is accordingly high.
Challenges
The DFH GROUP decided to award the project to codecentric because of a shortage of staff. The following project goals were developed together at the start of the project:
- Customer care was to be designed to be proactive and customer satisfaction increased.
- Pressure on internal customer support was to be reduced, thereby allowing it to improve the range of services offered.
- Future homeowners were to be able to deal with their issues independently, enabling problems to be resolved more quickly.
- The project had to ensure maximum transparency regarding processes and progress for both future homeowners and the DFH customer care team.
- All documents relevant to the construction project needed to be made available from a central location.
The digital portal was to establish a unique selling point for the DFH GROUP and thus secure valuable competitive advantage. The aim was to perfectly integrate the different requirements of all user groups (homeowners, service providers, customer advisors from the DFH GROUP and salespeople). Intuitive operation was required that would inspire all users. It was also necessary to consider the integration of internal interfaces and data sources. An iterative approach was also agreed, with the first version going live after three months.
Solution
The project kicked off in August 2021 with the joint specification of a minimum viable product (MVP), which was implemented in a focused manner in short iterations. The solution was initially built in conjunction with various AWS services to ensure rapid development. The customer's desire to be able to choose a different cloud in the future was taken into account and implemented during development.
Branding elements played a significant role in the design of the user interface. The three sales channels of the DFH GROUP were given specific design tokens that can be used flexibly depending on the operating company in question. This means that when future homeowners visit the portal, they are always shown the logo of the relevant sales organization.
The team used the open-source Keycloak solution for authentication and authorization purposes in order to protect sensitive customer data from unauthorized access. This was expanded to include additional functionalities such as two-factor authentication via SMS, an authenticator app and email.
Finally, the administrative area for the DFH GROUP was given useful service functions, allowing customer data to be managed directly in the portal and content such as FAQs or status updates to be entered.
Result
The MVP, a compact product in the design of the three sales divisions, was released in December 2021 after just under three months of development and offered the most important basic functions: Login, construction progress, contact book, and the possibility to log requests/issues. The basic functions were then extended so that future homeowners could also access the relevant documents when the system went live in February 2022.
The customer portal has been continuously enhanced since then. Homeowners can now view the status of their construction project 24/7, access all relevant documents and see the progress of the construction work as well as how costs have developed. Future homeowners can get in touch with the relevant contact person when they have questions. Concerns can be recorded systematically in a targeted manner, with descriptions and images.
Alexander Weber
Head of Customer Care / Product Owner, DFH GRUPPE
Our new self-service portal offers our customers real added value; the feedback has been consistently positive. The various functions of the portal have had a very positive impact on the quality of our service. We are delighted that we have been able to add so much value in such a short period.
Alexander Weber
Head of Customer Care / Product Owner, DFH GRUPPE
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Sabrina Martiensen