<p><span>Persimmon has made “good early progress” on improving its approach to customer service since the start of the year, it said today (July 4), but with its initiatives impacting volumes.</span></p><p><span>Issuing a trading update ahead of its half year results covering the period from January 1 to June 30 2019, the volume housebuilder said its key decision to delay its sales releases until later in the construction process in “higher demand” locations was starting to deliver the benefits it had anticipated, following customer issues. Its customer satisfaction rating had improved in the first seven months of the new HBF/NHBC s</span><span>urvey period, it said.</span></p><p><span>The group explained that, as part of a number of initiatives to deliver improvements to customers, it had adopted a “more targeted approach” to the timing of new home sales releases on certain sites and plots, “giving customers greater accuracy of anticipated moving-in dates” with a larger number of homes available for sale at a more advanced stage of construction.</span></p><p><span>As a result, the company’s new housing legal completions during the first half of the year were down to 7,584 new homes from the 8,072 achieved during the equivalent period in 2018. The average selling price of the properties rose …