If you’ve ever handed keys to a buyer and thought, “okay, we’re done here” — this episode is going to challenge that assumption in the best way possible.
Camille Jenkins has spent over 30 years inside new home construction, starting out as a receptionist at a roofing company in Phoenix, climbing onto actual roofs for inspections, doing warranty work in 118-degree heat, running orientations and walkthroughs, managing teams at the divisional level, and eventually becoming National VP of Customer Relations at one of the largest builders in the country. She’s seen this industry from the ground up — literally. Now, through her company Camille’s Keys, she works directly with residential builders to find where things are quietly breaking down and help them fix it before it costs them.
In this conversation, Camille and Michael Krisa get into something that sounds simple but apparently isn’t: communication. Not the marketing kind, not the “congratulations on your purchase” email kind — the kind that actually keeps a buyer from spiraling when construction goes quiet for three weeks and they start wondering if anyone remembers they exist.
Camille talks about a client she worked with where they mapped out the full buyer journey for the first time — and discovered that all the energy and contact happened early, around contract signing and design studio appointments, and then just… stopped once the dirt started moving.
“What we thought initially was maybe a response about the quality or the construction was really about a lack of communication. There was all of this communication early on, and then once it was time for the home to actually be built, there wasn’t much after that.”
That gap wasn’t a quality problem. It was a communication problem. So they built out a newsletter series, triggered by construction milestones, that explained what was happening on site, what was coming next, and even pointed buyers toward nearby parks and restaurants — basically doing the work of making someone feel connected to a community they hadn’t moved into yet.
The analogy Camille uses that really lands: imagine if, when you bought a car, you were invited to watch it being built on the factory floor. You’d see the robotic arm fumble a door panel. You’d see them fix it. And you’d probably lose your mind about it.
“This is the very last thing that you can watch being built by hand, by man. There’s nothing else. You get to go out and watch it being built, and you get to see the mistakes. There are an average of 22 to 24 trade partners involved — which is an opportunity for 22 to 24 potential delays. Why not be honest and say: we’re proud to be on this journey with you, here are things within our control, and here are things outside of our control.”
That’s the position every new home buyer is in. They show up on weekends when no one’s around, compare their foundation progress to the lot next door, and fill the silence with anxiety. Builders who understand that and get ahead of it — proactively, honestly — have a completely different relationship with their buyers by the time closing comes around. Camille puts it simply:
“There’s this consistent conversation that comes from the pilot, the person that we just blindly trust — and that’s to me what the check-ins along the process and the journey are. That voice that comes across and just reassures you.”
There’s also a good stretch of conversation about what happens after the keys are handed over, which is where Camille says most builders leave real money on the table. The warranty and post-close experience is often treated like a cost center rather than what it actually is: the best referral engine a builder has.
“You can’t have a budget of zero for the homeownership experience and expect to harness future referrals out of it. Is it going to be a story that motivates other people to look into you? Or is it going to be a story that makes them see your name and say, oh no, I have a friend who told me they had a horrible experience — or I was just at my friend’s home and their bathroom has been torn up for three weeks because their service tech hasn’t called, they can’t reach them, they ghosted them. There’s a story to be told — are you going to influence it positively or negatively?”
If someone’s bathroom is torn up for three weeks and no one’s returning their calls, that story travels. Camille’s point is that you’re either shaping that story or you’re not — but it’s getting told either way.
They also get into what it looks like to sell quality without just listing features.
“You don’t get points for things you don’t talk about. Everybody may have low-E glass, everybody may use certain types of paint — but who’s talking about it? Being able to say: here are our quality standards, here’s what we do that we know is above and beyond, and oh by the way, we have excellent after-close service.”
Buyers have no baseline for what’s standard and what’s above and beyond — so if you don’t tell them, you’re essentially giving away the differentiation you worked hard to earn.
The back half of the conversation touches on Camille’s own path through an industry that wasn’t always easy to navigate, how she learned to bring the customer’s voice into rooms where it wasn’t naturally welcome, and what she thinks the real opportunities are for women in construction — which, spoiler, go well beyond what most people picture when they hear the word “construction.”
“Your knowledge is your knowledge. It doesn’t matter what employer you work for — what you’ve learned is yours to keep.”
About Camille Jenkins
Camille Jenkins is the founder of Camille’s Keys, where she works directly with residential builders to fix the operational breakdowns that show up when companies start to grow — missed handoffs, unclear accountability, disconnected systems, and teams stretched past their limits.
With deep experience inside new home construction operations, Camille helps builders move from reactive firefighting to disciplined, repeatable processes that support scale. Her work focuses on the areas builders feel the most pressure: operational clarity, cross-department alignment, and building systems that can handle more volume without sacrificing margins or culture.
Camille is an active member of the National Association of Home Builders and a respected industry educator, most recently featured in an ECI Virtual Webinar focused on new home operations heading into 2026.
At her core, Camille partners with builders who are asking the hard questions: why does growth feel harder than it should? Where are we leaking time and money? And what has to change inside the business before we add more volume? Through Camille’s Keys, she helps builders install the operational foundation that allows them to grow on purpose — not by accident.
Links
Website: camilleskeys.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/camille-jenkins-az
NAHB Member Directory: members.hbaca.org/member-directory/Details/camille-s-keys-llc-2481657
ECI Virtual Webinar: ecisolutions.com/blog/residential-construction/new-home-operations-tips-2026
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