BuilderCX Drives Unprecedented Customer Satisfaction for Holt Homes

From Struggling with Customer Experience to Excelling: How One of the Nation's Top Builders Transformed Their CX

2025 UPDATE: When we first told this story in 2022, Holt Homes had just jumped 37 spots on the Builder 100. Three years later, the customer experience gains – and bottom-line impact – are even stronger. 

The Background:

In 2021, Bokka was engaged by Holt Homes, one of the nation's fastest growing home builders, to address their poor customer experience (CX). They had experienced unprecedented growth, but with no established CX program in place, they were struggling to measure and act on their customer feedback.
Based in Vancouver, Washington, Holt Homes has been recognized as the Biggest Mover on the 2022 Builder 100 list, jumping 37 spots to break into the top 100 at the No. 85 spot. The company, founded over three decades ago, provides homes for families in Oregon and Southwest Washington, primarily serving first-time and move-up home buyers. With Holt Homes' acquisition by Japanese home builder Sekisui House in 2022, growth accelerated even faster.

The Challenge:

Holt Homes had experienced significant growth, but with no established CX program in place, they had been struggling to measure and act on customer feedback. Recognizing that customer experience needed to be a top priority, Holt Homes hired a new VP of Marketing & Customer Experience to lead the effort.

The Solution:

The Bokka Group was engaged to implement BuilderCX, a solution that leverages more than 20 years of experience measuring and improving the new home buying experience. Using the Qualtrics platform, the program was designed to drive measurable results in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The new Voice of Customer (VoC) program included:

• Community-specific dashboards, reviewed weekly during on-site community team meetings.
• Customer Success Coordinator role, providing even higher levels of customer focus.
• Role-specific dashboards that provided insight into the performance of different departments of the home building organization, such as Sales, Design, Financing, Construction, and Warranty.
• Expert-designed survey questions were aligned with critical moments in the buying and building process.
• Pre-built surveys and dashboards accelerated the time-to-value for Holt's VoC program.
• Action plans for follow-up and a ticketing system to help departments respond to customer feedback.

Final Result

The implementation of BuilderCX helped Holt Homes achieve unprecedented improvements in customer satisfaction and loyalty, as measured by their Net Promoter Score (NPS) – the preferred CX metric for builders. 

They surpassed all expectations:

• Referral sales climbed from 25.0% (2021) to more than 35% (mid-2025). 
• Holt Homes' Net Promoter Scores (NPS), from surveys collected 45 days after move-in, increased from a 6.0 (2021) to 35.8 (2022) to 73.1 (mid-year 2025).
• Surpassed the home building industry average NPS of 31.1, exceeding Holt Homes' goals in the first year.
• 6,300+ surveys analyzed across every customer touch-point.
• Action planning led to organizational accountability that scales with the growth of the company.
• Significant improvements in customer satisfaction, loyalty and referrals.

Higher referrals have resulted in:

• Lower cost of acquisition and higher margins.
• Fewer visits to close more homes.
• Sales efficiency – fewer touchpoints and less nurturing required as trust is “pre-loaded” with referred prospects.
• Referred customers have been taught how to refer, and more likely to refer when they have a great experience – creating a flywheel effect.

Great Customer Experience isn’t just about customer satisfaction. It’s a revenue strategy. It fuels high-converting, low-cost referrals that offset the need for aggressive spends in paid media and lead gen services. It’s one of the few ways a builder can increase volume and improve margin without relying on price increases or cost cutting.

Ready to see a similar lift? Let’s talk about your customer experience.