“I’ve been fortunate to work in the travel industry during a time of great digital disruption and transformation. It will be interesting to see if architecture follows the same trajectory.” Vicki Goodin, Head of Sales and Marketing, briq.works

I spent the early part of my career working for a company that helped travel companies embrace their digital journey and so keep step with what their customers were asking for. Of course, travel is much further along its digital journey compared to architecture. But despite that, there are similarities in both sectors, particularly when it comes to customer experience.

As we know, customers have all the information they need at their fingertips to enable them to make smart choices when it comes to choosing a service, whether that service is a travel agent or an architect.  But in both sectors, it’s not just about crunching the data to make a decision. There’s emotion at play too, and a big part of that is about the customer journey or experience.

In travel, a holiday might represent something that’s been saved for, or marking a big life event. In architecture, people are making probably the biggest investment of their lives on their home, and expect a good client experience as part of that. And with 50% of architects’ work coming from personal recommendations, getting this right is crucial.

Let’s look at that important client/architect relationship for a moment. A recent study from Dave Sharp at the Architecture Marketing Blog showed that there was what he called a ‘disconnect’ between what clients actually value from architects and what architects believe clients value.

Yes, of course it’s important that there’s agreement on the final project vision, but what clients valued particularly in their architect as part of this were approachability, good communication skills and an up to date use of technology.

So how can technology help with the communication and approachability side of things for architects? Doesn’t tech make things less personal rather than more?

Here at briq.works, we believe that tech, implemented with care, can transform the client experience. And we also believe that digital transformation is not an optional extra but rather a necessity for architect practices wanting to operate commercially.

briq.works enables architects to produce clear plans, track tasks effectively as the project gets underway, and keep their clients in the loop if anything changes. After all, you’ll never meet a client who complains about getting too many updates.

We are on a journey to support architects work efficiently and provide the highest levels of customer service to their clients. We hope you’ll join us.