Klober Customer Insights 2023

Every year Klober sets out to better understand its customers needs, both merchants and installers, via an insights survey. The results from our surveys aim to inform and influence the way we work, and focus our business objectives to your most important needs. Our industry is constantly evolving - and in turn, so are we.

The results from our 2023 survey are now in, and we’ve learnt a few things about our customers that we’d like to share with you:

Key findings:

Biggest Problem Facing the Industry
Both merchants and installers said that the biggest problem facing the industry and their businesses right now is prices of materials. This is a result of a number of factors, including the increase in price of raw materials, increase in energy pricing driving up costs of manufacturing, transportation and more.

Quality, Trust and Pricing
Whilst it’s clear that installers chose ‘ensuring value for money’ as their top driving factor when it comes to roofing products brands, they also want to see ‘quality of products’ and ‘trust in the manufacturer’ as their second and third priorities. Getting the balance between pricing and product quality is of key importance for installers.

Point of Sale at the Tradecounter
One of the biggest areas merchants would like support from their manufacturers is POS and merchandising - in fact, 65% of merchants want more support from manufacturers in this area. This, paired with the finding that 22% of roofers said they had bought a product as a direct result of a display or information displayed at the tradecounter, shows that merchants should continue to improve their instore merchandising.

Training and Learning
Although merchants still consider In-Person training at their branches to be their preferred means of manufacturer training with 61% citing as their preference, there’s certainly been a shift over the last year. This figure had dropped by 9% since our 2022 survey, whilst the preference for training via online videos and content has increased by 5% since last year, to a lesser 23% who prefer this means - but albeit a notable shift in value for online and on-demand resources.

The Klober Brand
Overall, Installers rated us 9.2/10 when it came to the quality of our products and the trust they have in us as a manufacturer. It’s also reassuring to learn that Merchants scored us 8.2/10 for their overall experience working with Klober - a small but affirming +0.11% increase on last year’s score.

Background

Both merchant and installer surveys were carried out by a 3rd party research agency, with years of experience working in the construction industry. The agency interviewed 223 roofing stockist merchants and 200 installers, who were predominantly roofers or builders undertaking a high percentage of roofing work.