French Brothers Customer Success Story

French Brothers, headquartered in Alamogordo, New Mexico, has been using ECI’s MarkSystems to save the company money and countless labor hours. The robust home building software has handled everything from scheduling and contracted work variations to budgeting and vendor payments—and lots in between. The system has proved invaluable for French Brothers, which builds upwards of 300 homes annually in the $300,000 to $500,000 price range. The one area the software didn’t tie into was customer experience—until LotVue.

A Game-Changer

According to Aileen Carroll, French Brothers marketing and brand manager, the company started using LotVue a few months ago. The builder decided to add and integrate it with MarkSystems based on the trend of customers, including homebuyers, who have been working more online since the pandemic.

“We needed a more robust tool for customers to use before they actually visit a model home,” Carroll says. “The more we can let customers shop around online before they come in person, the better. In today’s market, if you aren’t offering flexible hours and tools that customers can access 24/7, you will lose sales. LotVue allows us to provide an amazing tool to our customers that is accessible any time, day or night. Our customers can compare homesites and see which floorplans they can build, all from the comfort of their couch.

“Homebuyers, and shoppers in general, are very savvy and do their research before buying. A new home is a significant investment, so we want to provide as many tools as possible to give our customers peace of mind that they are making the right choice in choosing us as their home builder.”

“Most people like to see what they are buying,” Carroll says. “LotVue allows users to see the larger view of a community and zoom in to individual homesites. When they click on a particular home site, they can see images and floorplans of the homes that are available on that site. They can also see predesigned homes for sale as well as the homes that have already sold in the community. We have LotVue embedded into Google Maps, so customers can zoom out for an even bigger picture of where the community sits within the city; they can search for nearby amenities, like schools, hospitals, shopping, and dining. LotVue makes the selling process very visual.”

That’s not to say that all the benefits of using LotVue are customer-focused.

“Internally, LotVue lets the whole team see where projects are in real-time,” Carroll says. “It provides a color-coded map that lets a builder see, at a glance, which homes are on schedule and budget. The information is all in one place, so there is no need for multiple separate reports. Plus, it’s visual, so it is easy to digest.”

LotVue helps builders engage and convert more home buyers online while making it easier to manage your lot inventory efficiently. Read the complete French Brothers customer success story.