Would You Rather Prevent or Solve a Problem?
There's an elephant in the room when it comes to the home inspection
What if the inspector misses something?
The way most companies address this is on the back end - offering home buyers a warranty that sounds really big and protective ... until they call about it. Then they get run around, pay deductibles or service fees, and hear denials with words like "pre-existing condition."
Would you rather chance your client's experience to a third-party's ineffective warrty or to a company that has an internal accuracy goal of 98% (and is currently tracking 98.9%) and has an in-house guarantee to cover the gap to 100%?
At Home-Probe, we choose to start by preventing a need for the warranty in the first place. We’re always asking ourselves, “how can we make someone's life better?”
Prevention Starts With Investing in Process Improvement
This mindset has led us to create and invest in a Process Improvement Department, led by former inspector and trainer, Steve Shirreffs. It wasn't an easy decision to invest in a full-time, highly-skilled person to prevent issues, but we knew it was the best thing for our real estate agents and clients.
Here's a snapshot of this work:
- Develop Standard of Practice (SOP)
- Train new employees
- Audit and review reports for quality assurance
- Develop current workforce
- Evaluate feedback from customers
- Improve SOP or add training based on feedback evaluation
Auditing and Reviewing Reports for QA/QC
At least 15% of our reports are routinely screened to ensure compliance with our SOP. While it's rare, those with issues are then audited further. The inspector receives feedback on how to improve.
Surprise! When Things Go Wrong
For the year 2022, we performed 3,960 inspections. We actively seek feedback from our customers and their real estate agents immediately after the inspection, and again 60 days after the inspection, when it's likely they have moved in.
We encourage clients who move in to a home that doesn't match their expectations based on the report to call us. We had 162 do so this year (which represents about 4% of our customers).
When we get a call like this, we audit the report against what the client is experiencing. Sometimes a site visit is required. We look to see if the issue was noted in the report, was it in our scope of work, and was it (likely) visible at the time of inspection. If we made a mistake or the condition changed in the first 100 days after the inspection, we make it right with our client. Here's what we found this year:
- 43 inspections (1.1% of our work), we did not report a condition that we should have. This is what we call "Avoidable." We make the client whole in these cases without the use of a third-party warranty. Home-Probe also follows up internally with the inspector and the team leader or the SOP to ensure we don't make the same mistake twice.
- 43 inspections (1.1% of our work), the system or component was functioning at the time of inspection and stopped functioning within 100 days. We look to make sure the report did not identify an issue (the system was at the end of its life expectancy) in the report that predicted the failure. If not, this is a surprise to everyone, and our 100-Day Home Inspection Guarantee applies to help the client resolve the issue.
- 29 inspections (.7% of our work) the system or component was identified in the report with a recommendation to repair or seek further data about it because it was not functioning as intended or nearing the end of its life expectancy. For those cases, the client assumes the risk by not following the advice in the report.
- 53 inspections (1.3% of our work) the system or component is outside our scope of work. Even these instances go through internal review to see if our standard needs to change or if we can better communicate it to clients. We often find clients don't read what we send them in our Inspection Agreement and the ASHI Standard of Practice before something goes wrong.
Home-Probe is raising the bar on the standards of excellence for home inspection.
Our reputation of being reliable and methodical inspectors is very important to us. Trust your experience to the company that is hungry for growth in accuracy and accountability.
With Home-Probe, you will get same-day reporting, cost of estimates for repair and someone will be available to answer any questions before and after your inspection seven days a week.
