Why Developers Need To Work On Their Communication Skills

There is no aspect of life where communication does not play a role that has the potential of making or breaking things. This is true of our personal as well as professional relationships. If you somehow fail to express your love and gratitude for your loved ones through verbal communication or other gestures, you risk impressing upon them the feeling that you do not care enough. You do not clearly let your senior know what all you might be doing for the organisation and they will never know it. Your annual appraisal might not turn out as good as you might have expected.

The same rule applies to businesses as well. In the modern times when all the information in the world could be accessed through the click of a tiny button, the role of communication for businesses has gone so big that corporates spend a great deal of their budget on improving their brand and communication strategy. Needless to say, not all of them succeed in finding the right strategy. Among those who have miserably failed in communicating effectively with their customer are real estate developers of the country. And, we will not be exaggerating if we said this communication failure between the developers and the buyers resulted in the doom and gloom that hovered around India's real estate for over three years, beginning 2014. Data prove an unhappy customer base cost India's real estate developers dear, and they themselves are to be blamed for it.

There are some of the many things that developers might have done wrong or could have done right.

The state of shock

Worst of all, an utter state of confusion awaits a buyer when he enters the property markets. He will be told to pay a particular sum for the property, but would end up paying much more. Of course, there were other taxes to be paid by the developer and the cost was passed on to the buyer. But, it would have only been wise to clearly share this with your customers. The information is shared only when an unhappy buyer insists. Often, the expert team in the company will put to display its mathematical genius and baffle buyers with all the calculation. Confused and disappointed, a buyer is often left with no choice to agree with you. Without questioning the rightfulness of the number jugglery, it would be safe to say this is a perfect example of a bad communication strategy.  

Mind you, buyers come prepared for last-minute escalations in the total cost. However, the escalation should not be so sharp that they end up feeling cheated. And, the worst would be to justify the act through smart number games. The Past is witness one can only go so far by baffling customers through number juggling.

On talking terms

Then, there are cases of not communicating when it is needed the most. There have been instances of developers not keeping buyers in the loop if they expected projects missing their completion deadline. To make matters worse, upon missing the first deadline, another deadline is set, often to cross once again. Developers' inability to keep their promises does more damage than they can imagine. An unhappy lot of buyers can be detrimental for the brand a developer might have built over the years. India's real estate sector is full of examples of such players. One does not need a communication expert only to devise a strategy that will help a developer sell all the units in a project fast. This developer would also need an effective communication strategy to convey to buyers that there might be delays in handling over the possession or there might be fear of the project not getting completed, for that matter.