Happy Handover Process

“The most empow­er­ing con­di­tion of all is when the entire orga­ni­za­tion is aligned with its mis­sions, and people’s pas­sions and pur­pose are in synch with each oth­er.” — Bill George, for­mer CEO, Medtronic

When Mr. and Mrs. Kaushik arrived to take pos­ses­sion of their family’s new home in Ashi­ana Group’s new devel­op­ment in Bhi­wa­di, India, they were stunned.

As they approached, a red car­pet stretched from the side­walk to his front door, and a bright red rib­bon wrapped around their front door. It was a moment they’d talk about the rest of their lives – and exact­ly what Ankur Gup­ta and his broth­ers hoped.

This hap­py cus­tomer moment is just one of hun­dreds and hun­dreds that take place in Ashi­ana prop­er­ties, every year. It’s planned, it’s heart­felt – and it’s only pos­si­ble because of strong strate­gic align­ment in the exec­u­tive team, and focused and enthu­si­as­tic effort by every one of their 800 employees.

Nur­tur­ing Smiles

Many years ago the late Shri Om Prakash Gup­ta start­ed Ashi­ana to build hap­py, vibrant com­mu­ni­ties for the mid­dle-income group in India – a notably dif­fer­ent approach to oth­er real estate devel­op­ers who make their mon­ey and move on.

“One of his biggest strengths was his sense of car­ing for peo­ple,” says his son Joint Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Ankur Gup­ta. ​“He would care for every­body, and want­ed them to be hap­py work­ing with us. He also gave a lot of impor­tance to hon­esty and trans­paren­cy, inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly to con­sumers — and would always look to see where he could add value.”

Ankur and his two broth­ers — Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Vishal Gup­ta and Whole Time Direc­tor Varun Gup­ta ‑run the com­pa­ny today, and don’t just keep his val­ues alive — they’ve turned them into a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. And they do it with a strong, aligned team who do every­thing they can to ful­fill the com­pa­ny pur­pose of Nur­tur­ing Smiles.

Ankur explain, ​“We’re not sell­ing real estate but high qual­i­ty lifestyle. This is the largest pur­chase – and most emo­tion­al pur­chase – some­one will make, and we want to make it spe­cial. Dad always used to say that the chil­dren who grow up in our Ashi­ana prop­er­ties should be smarter, hap­pi­er, and expect more than the kids who grows up in any oth­er project.”

And so Ashi­ana not only builds prop­er­ties, they main­tain them for­ev­er. And they cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for the fam­i­lies – like pro­vid­ing learn­ing cen­tres, and orga­niz­ing swim­ming, dance, art and singing lessons, dance and sports com­pe­ti­tions, and many oth­er activ­i­ties – that build real com­mu­ni­ties. It’s a mag­i­cal company.

“The way a team plays as a whole deter­mines its suc­cess. You may have the great­est bunch of indi­vid­ual stars in the world, but if they don’t play togeth­er, the club won’t be worth a dime.” — Babe Ruth

Sol­id Strat­e­gy, Aligned Team

Every time I’ve worked with Ashi­ana over five years, these liv­ing, breath­ing val­ues have informed our annu­al plan­ning ses­sions. Like when we met in Sin­ga­pore, last March, to work on how we could strength­en the com­pa­ny in the com­ing year. At this point, the real estate mar­ket was fair­ly soft, and after hours of debate and dis­cus­sion we decid­ed — based on their long-term strat­e­gy — to opti­mize the expe­ri­ence the moment the cus­tomer received the keys to their flat. This became our #1 objec­tive, and our theme for the year: Hap­py Handovers.

It made sense that, with a strong refer­ral-based com­pa­ny cul­ture, we could dri­ve future sales by mak­ing sure that every cus­tomer had an amaz­ing sto­ry to tell their friends and fam­i­ly — and per­haps buy anoth­er unit them­selves – or inspire some­one else to. Every Hap­py Han­dover was a sol­id oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a pos­i­tive impres­sion to an esti­mat­ed 2,300 peo­ple that year – to turn them into Ashi­ana promoters.

(As an aside: when I do facil­i­ta­tion work with this group, Nur­tur­ing Smiles is so true – it’s in their DNA. Over the course of three days, my face hurt from laugh­ing so much. It’s an absolute riot. We do work hard, and for long days, but their pur­pose is so true.)

Time to Get Khushi

Now we already had a good han­dover pro­gram — but not the best pos­si­ble. So we set five pri­or­i­ties to get us there…

1. Estab­lish a sys­tem to mea­sure and respond to all the cus­tomer feed­back — the ​‘Khushi meter’ (Khushi means hap­pi­ness in Hin­di) — using a Net Pro­mot­er score: extreme­ly hap­py (pro­mot­ers), pas­sive (OK), unhap­py (detrac­tors)
2. Stream­line the han­dover process to make it easy and joyful
3. Be oper­a­tion-ready and make sure all util­i­ties and com­mon areas are ready
4. The WOW expe­ri­ence: Make sure each Ashi­ana fam­i­ly has at least one extra­or­di­nary sto­ry to tell. We did a rib­bon cut­ting, ran a red car­pet all the way to the unit, put a framed pho­to­graph of their fam­i­ly on the table when they arrived, offered choco­lates and cake, and looked for ways to please every sin­gle customer.
5. …and, of course, a process to deal with what we learned.

“One buy­er was so hap­py with his Hap­py Han­dover,” report­ed Ankur, ​“that he invit­ed 24 peo­ple over, and made us do it again so that they could see what we did for him in his new home.”

The ener­gy his team puts in is extra­or­di­nary – beyond any­thing I’ve heard any oth­er com­pa­ny doing — in real estate, or otherwise.

“Our team so bad­ly want­ed to be the best in the world that they actu­al­ly put a lot effort behind it. We invit­ed some­one from Eng­land to train our staff on how to be oper­a­tional-ready build­ing: doc­u­ment ready, peo­ple ready, ser­vices ready, build­ing ready.

“We also changed the title reg­is­tra­tion process for our cus­tomers – which is very, very painful in India, and can take whole day to get done. When we sent some­one on our senior team to help, we found that the registrar’s offices had no air con, no water, no park­ing, and com­put­ers that didn’t work. So we installed air con, made park­ing spots, gave cus­tomers cold water, and cre­at­ed a work­ing com­put­er sys­tem. Now, reg­is­tra­tion takes 30 min­utes, and Ashi­ana cus­tomers are treat­ed with spe­cial care at the registrar’s office.

They didn’t just help Ashi­ana cus­tomers. They helped every­body in those com­mu­ni­ties who need­ed to reg­is­ter a prop­er­ty! So why did they do it?

“Our cus­tomers said they need­ed it – so we just did it.”

And that effort paid off: Up to 80% of their homes are now sold through word of mouth — and they’ve cre­at­ed extra­or­di­nary align­ment in their exec­u­tive team, and gal­va­nized their employ­ees to ful­fill their purpose.

Why Did it Work?

• We had a sim­ple goal that made the impact we need­ed it to make
• The entire exec­u­tive team was aligned that this was the sin­gle most impor­tant thing we could do — and those annu­al pri­or­i­ties involved almost every mem­ber of the exec­u­tive team.
• Most of the oth­er annu­al goals are direct­ly relat­ed to this program
• We made it a ton of fun.
• We aligned all 800 employ­ees around it — all obsessed with doing the right thing for the customer.

Lessons and Insights

The impact on peo­ple in the com­pa­ny has­been phe­nom­e­nal – a mind­set shift. Staff — so fired up about the Khushi score when a Hap­py Han­dover hap­pens — want­ed that feed­back quickly.

If they scored low, they want­ed to imme­di­ate­ly cor­rect what­ev­er those issues were. It was unbe­liev­able. They also want­ed to close the loop on con­sumer feed­back, so we made a sys­tem to under­stand any repet­i­tive kind of prob­lems. One cus­tomer, for exam­ple, was hop­ing to get a light bulb, which we nev­er pro­vid­ed. To please him, we bought light bulbs – and then pro­vid­ed them for every­one. We always scored bet­ter when we lis­tened to our customers.

“What we learned along the way made us a bet­ter com­pa­ny,” con­cludes Ankur. ​“The only way to win is to have peo­ple engaged in what they are doing, and let them be cre­ative with their own ideas of what will work in their loca­tion. It makes a big difference.”

If you get it right, it could be an amazing.

Based in New Del­hi, India, Ashi­ana Group is a client that began devel­op­ing real estate over 30 years ago — at a time when qual­i­ty hous­ing at an afford­able price was unheard of. Today, they devel­op res­i­den­tial projects in eight loca­tions across India and, last year - based on their growth and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rat­ings – was vot­ed ​‘Most Promis­ing Com­pa­ny’ in India for the next decade, by CNBC Awaaz, India’s #1 busi­ness media channel.