Customer Ride Alongs: Our secret weapon for understanding builders – and improving the product

Spending a day in the life of a Buildertrend customer.

This is something our team has always dreamed of getting the chance to do. And luckily, thanks to several eager team members and willing contractors, we’ve been able to create an exciting new program this year: Buildertrend Customer Ride Alongs.

For a company that strives to create the best possible product for our builders, it’s no surprise we’ve made the jump from taking customer feedback solely over the phone to actually spending a day alongside the builders and remodelers who routinely use our construction app.

By visiting customers in person, we get the chance to truly learn their processes, understand their pain points and see how our tools affect their daily lives.

After several rounds of Customer Ride Alongs, we’ve gathered some great feedback and are excited to share the findings of the employees who participated.

What is a Customer Ride Along?

A Customer Ride Along is a chance to let our team shadow yours for a day.

We send a Buildertrend employee out to one of our customers’ locations so they can spend a workday at the office and the job site of a real builder. They get to see firsthand how a home builder or remodeler uses Buildertrend, rather than just hearing about it over a Zoom meeting.

The employee takes notes and documents their findings to share with the rest of the company, so every team at Buildertrend can improve based on this feedback.

Why is a Customer Ride Along beneficial?

The main benefit of a Customer Ride Along is it makes our product better for our builders.

Sure, it’s a good time to receive customer feedback on our software, but really the Ride Along lets us learn and see how our customers work. And this is how we determine what improvements need to be made to the platform.

“We believe that customers shouldn’t have to learn how Buildertrend works – we need to learn how they work. When we can see the needs for ourselves by observing customers in their environment, we become curious about the problem, passionate about fixing it and learn more rapidly in the process.” – Keara Buckle, director of product design at Buildertrend and founder of the Customer Ride Along program

By sending employees out on location, they can also:

• Gain empathy by observing and interacting with customers in their environment.
• Accelerate learning about our customers’ emotional and logical needs throughout a process.
• Document and share findings with other teammates through stories and photographs.

What are we learning from Customer Ride Alongs?

The information gleaned from this program has been endless and eye opening.

Here are just a few of the takeaways our team has noted from previous Ride Alongs:

• Some subs aren’t using our app because they don’t speak English or they don’t have smartphones – and some don’t even have cellphones. Even if they wanted to use our app, they couldn’t.
• General contractors are holding daily stand-ups with their field crews onsite to go through the schedule and tasks so everyone knows what they should be doing each day.
• These teams are busy. So when a feature requires too many clicks to accomplish what they need, they’re losing precious time.
• Homeowners express their frustrations with their builder about project and budget transparency and ask if Buildertrend can help with that.

Getting this feedback over the phone is nothing compared to seeing it in person. It’s being seen and felt by the people who can actually effect change in our software – the product and leadership teams.

Here’s what our Ride Along participants are saying about their experiences:

“You can only get so much from a customer who calls in and is like, ‘I don’t like the feature.’ So the Ride Along was cool to see how this is actually playing into their day-to-day business.” – Hannah Golden, product designer at Buildertrend

“They don’t have a lot of time, and seeing that firsthand, it sticks with me more.” – Alec Davy, product designer at Buildertrend

“This particular experience gave me a lot of insight into why we build it. And seeing it in action was very inspiring. It was a great experience.” – Adam Knodel, principal architect at Buildertrend

“Being able to get back to my roots and visit a contractor in their environment, I think it helps you develop a lot more empathy for what their day-to-day looks like. There’s something about sitting there in person with someone who’s struggling to click through something that makes you feel their pain a lot more.” – Scott Siegert, chief operating officer

What to expect during your Ride Along

If you’ve decided to host a Ride Along and share your knowledge, feedback and challenges with our team, here’s what you can expect:

• One of our team members will spend 4-8 hours shadowing you and your employees in your office and on the job site.
• Your Buildertrend shadow will take notes, snap photos and pop in with the occasional question – but they’re there to observe, so interference will be minimal.
• You can ask your Buildertrend shadow questions or offer feedback if there’s anything you or your team are struggling with.
• This is a free program for our customers, and it gives you the chance to make our product and services better.

Let us learn directly from you

No company and no product is perfect ­– but we’d like to get close!

Let’s work together to build the best possible platform for your business, so you can grow your company and still have a life outside of work.

If you’re interested in having our team join yours for a Customer Ride Along, we’d love to add you to a future cohort. Reach out to keara.buckle@buildertrend.com, and she’ll let you know the next steps.