The latest news from GuildQuality.

“Startling” findings from the American Marketing Association:

From 1996-2003, the [publicly traded companies that rank among the top 20% in customer satisfaction] outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 93%, the S&P 500 by 201%, and NASDAQ by 335%.

Our own research within the building and real estate industry echoes these findings. See here and here for some more recent findings on the relationship between customer satisfaction and profit, and here for a correlation between customer satisfaction and bankruptcy.

This paper could stand to be refreshed for today’s market, but I suspect the same trend would hold true. The companies that highest ranked in customer satisfaction were increasing their lead as time went on.

As discussed in this recent post, the internet is enabling customers to make more informed decisions about where to spend their money — pushing more market share to the best service providers, and making it harder and harder for lackluster performers to close business.

Thanks to Geoff Hartnett for sending me the article.

Literally. Just ask this Atlanta-area Chili’s owner.

“Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out…”

From Malcolm Gladwell, courtesy of 37signals.

On the evening of November 7, Andrew Hughes of Stanley Martin Homes let us know that they were interested in moving forward with GuildQuality’s customer satisfaction surveying. Yesterday evening, five weeks later, Andrew sent us an email congratulating us on receiving the 100th survey response for SMH.

I bring this up not because it is atypical for GuildQuality (because it’s not), but because it ought to be normal regardless of whatever software or system you adopt.

In my experience, the hardest part of getting underway with GuildQuality is making the decision that collecting customer feedback is critical to delivering an exceptional customer experience — and that delivering an exceptional customer experience is critical to the health of your business.

Making the decision — and the commitment — is the hard part. Getting started is easy.

From the press release:

Jackson Design & Remodeling (JDR), winner of the 2007 BBB Torch Award for Business Ethics, today announced that CEO Todd Jackson has been elected President of the San Diego Chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) for a second consecutive year.

Jackson Design & Remodeling has been a GuildQuality member since 2006. I had the pleasure of spending time with Todd at the 2007 Remodeling Conference in Las Vegas. He is a genuinely positive person, and a tremendously talented professional.

Some recent news about Zip Realty from the New York Times: They are now publishing their brokers customer satisfaction scores.

In October, ZipRealty, a national firm based in Emeryville, Calif., took the results of client surveys that had long been under lock and key and started publishing them online at www.ziprealty.com. Brokers are scored on a five-star scale, with one star indicating “completely dissatisfied” and five “completely satisfied.”

And how is this impacting their agents?

“I’m a salesperson, so I can talk a good game,” Ms. Assael said, “but the ratings compel me to make sure every ‘i’ is dotted and everyone is satisfied.”

From November’s Remodeling Magazine:

Steven Whitlock of Hubert Whitlock Builders answers the question: “How do you teach your employees and trade partners customer service skills?”

…To reinforce customer service, we use GuildQuality to survey our clients so we can focus improvement efforts. These surveys are important input for our “lessons learned” process. GuildQuality and lessons learned are culminating steps in our project-management methodology. They create the feedback loop to continually improve customer service…

GQ is just part of his strategy. Read his entire comments, and those of other Big50 Remodelers, here.

Patrick O’Toole of QR writes about how GuildQuality member Heritage Construction Services earned the NAHB’s coveted Remodeler of the Year award for 2008. This is the second year in a row a Guildmember has earned the NAHB’s top remodeler award.

Owner Jeff Hunt is giving a presentation with journalist Patrick O’Toole at the IBS on January 21. Here are the details:

The 10 Best Practices of the NAHB Remodeler of the Year
3:30PM-5:30PM South 231
Patrick O’Toole, Qualified Remodeler Magazine, Arlington Heights, WI
Jeff Hunt, CGR, CAPS, CGP, Heritage Construction, Houston, TX

From Fast Company’s recent article on the emergence of the “Reputation Economy”:

Businesses spend millions to cultivate their reputations; now consumer evaluations can make or break them instantly. “The conventional wisdom is that a satisfied customer will tell one person and an unhappy person will tell 10,” says Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and an expert on the reputation economy. “That’s now been upped by orders of magnitude.”

Now more than ever, it is important to cultivate a positive image. Obviously, you can try to improve your reputation by encouraging friends to post positive stuff about you online and hiring consultants to drown out negative customer sentiment.

Or, you can spend that energy delivering an exceptional customer experience. Create a great reputation the old-fashioned way: Earn it.

GuildQuality is seeking a part-time Marketing Manager (about 20 hours per week). Our expectation is that this will ultimately become a full-time position at some point in 2009.

The Marketing Manager will be responsible for all aspects of marketing execution, and will work closely with our entire team. Responsibilities will include 1) generating qualified leads for the sales team, and 2) effective communications with existing customers.

These activities will include the following:
• Managing the company’s marketing calendar for prospects and customers
• Web/email marketing campaigns to prospects
• Coordinating informational webinars
• Working with partners to execute a joint marketing plan
• Preparation for select trade shows
• Identifying speaking engagements
• Writing newsletters and customer communications
• Managing the contact database
• Writing and publishing press releases
• Developing collateral materials for the sales team

The position will be located in the company’s headquarters in Midtown Atlanta, and will report to the Vice President, Sales & Marketing. The right candidate must be willing to travel to trade shows and other select events, but we expect this to be fewer than 10 days per year.

Candidates should not apply unless they have the following credentials:
• Experience with CRM tools and email marketing software
• Strong writing skills (sample required)
• Strong design and HTML skills
• Strong verbal communication skills
• Ability to manage a marketing calendar and work independently
• Interest in working in an entrepreneurial environment

Please send your resume, along with a cover letter and writing samples to marketing at guildquality dot com.

As a courtesy to your customers and a quality control measure, our survey process enables respondents to review their feedback at any time after they complete a survey. About 1 out of 20 survey respondents return to GQ’s website to review their response. When they return, we give them the opportunity to give us additional feedback about GuildQuality and the survey process itself. Following are some of their comments from November:

“A very comprehensive and thought out survey which covered very important concerns. Thank you.”

“Easy to fill out, short and to the point.”

“easy, thorough survey. great length.”

“I found it easy to complete the survey.”

“I like the ability to expand on a selection. I felt my call was returned in a timely manner and Laura was sensitive to my concerns and reservation about submitting an electronic survey. Thank you for giving me an outlet to provide feedback.”

“Quick and easy, like the simplicity of your surveys.”

“The survey creates more of a conducive feedback process at home versus; trying to schedule a block of time to sit down and speak with a representative or simply come in and place your comments on a small survey sheet.”

Calculated Risk is a great blog on economic statistics, with often thought provoking charts and data.

Signal vs Noise remains a staple in my diet.

I recently subscribed to FlowingData — a blog about visualizing information in a useful way (which is a significant part of GuildQuality’s focus).

And for books, I am in the final few pages of Joseph Ellis’ latest work American Creation (and here’s the NYT review). Personally, I preferred his similarly structured Founding Brothers, and his biography of Washington was amazing, inspiring, and gave me a renewed and heightened respect for our amazing first founder.

Black Swan is in its sixth month of sitting on my bedside table. It is great so far, but I have been unable to get through it in the face of the author’s horrible prescience.

My book club (made up of six college buddies) just chose our next book: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

UPDATE: You can download a complete summary of all the member feedback by clicking here.

In the previous two weeks, 125 members responded to our survey about their predictions for the market’s next six months and their strategies for overcoming the considerable challenges facing the building industry.

Expectations for the Market. When it comes to the market in general, 46% of members expect the decline to continue, and only 12% expect improvements. Members were considerably more optimistic when it comes to their own companies future, with as many people forecasting a much brighter road ahead as there were people predicting either more of the same or worsening conditions.

We’ll conduct a similar poll in three months, and hopefully see some positive change in these forecasts.

Strategy. Of much more interest were people’s feedback about their strategies for handling our extended stay in the Pit of Dispair. Strategies ranged from prayer to a deepened focus on their relationship with existing and past customers. Almost all of the strategies fell into one of eight categories. The predominant category was aggressive stewardship of resources with a focus on ensuring that the company has the resources to weather the storm. Second to that was an increased marketing, third was solidifying or strengthening their relationships with existing customers, and fourth was enhanced operations and systems.

Selected “Strategies” comments

“The challenging economic market is forcing companies to move outside their comfort zone. Those that respond quickly and efficiently will be better positioned once recovery begins.”

“Managing cash flow, backing out of existing land purchase agreements.”

“Leverage the heck out of our existing client base.”

“Customer service oriented, quality workmanship, lean business model, manage internal costs, increased marketing and sales efforts.”

“Never stop focusing on the customer first! Quality customer service along with quality product!”

“Developing a plan with timeframes and benchmarks to make additional reductions in overhead and staff.”

“Planning, using the crystal ball, crossing our fingers, not stepping on white lines, improving our marketing, getting better financial reporting, fine tuning our budget, watching our costs.

Emerging Trends. Among the emerging trends our members are predicting, it was no surprise to see energy efficiency becoming a big priority for customers, and home size and lot size waning in importance.

Selected “Emerging Trends” comments

“Energy efficient, sustainable building is (finally!) catching on and something that’s in most conversations in some way, shape or form.”

“Need products such as energy efficient replacement windows and baths are holding up substantially better and are a lower cost product.”

“They want the assurance they’re dealing with a reputable contractor. Not someone who will ‘take the money and run’.”

“Our customers are becoming more interested ‘green’ options that do not add significant cost i.e. open cell foam insulation, on-demand hot water units, geo-thermal systems or high SEER rated heat pumps, etc.”

“Cheaper more affordable homes, more storage, more garage, assistance with sale of their home.”

“It is a buyer’s market, so we are definitely working to be more flexible in accomodating requests. On the positive side, our willingness to refer has continued to rise, and while the overall number of customers is down, each individual buyer seems to have a higher average rating of satisfaction with their home and service from our team.”

“Green is big in the media, but the public seems somewhat less excited about the fast running train to Green. They still want their granite countertops in lieu of closed cell insulation.”

UPDATE: Download the complete summary by clicking here.

One of the juiciest features of the GuildQuality program is the Project Filters feature. Creating customized Project Filters gives you the ability to discern even more valuable information from the standard customer satisfaction feedback. This element enables you to “tag” surveys with specific characteristics, such as the salesperson that did the deal, the project manager in charge of construction, the neighborhood in which the home was built, the company division under which the project falls, etc. When you create these “tags”, you can then look at the hundreds of data points you might have, and narrow the information down by your filters. For example: compare the performance of all salespeople to one another; see which project managers are managing expectations appropriately; identify which company division ranks the highest in customer satisfaction; view only projects in the Design/Build division. View a short video tutorial on how to create Project Filters here.

In the same vein of Project Filters comes Question Bundles. Creating Question Bundles allows you to group together specific questions by type and then view these specific groups on the reporting side of things. For example: questions related to the communication process, problem resolution, and schedule of the job are directly related to the performance of the project manager. Create a “Project Manager” Question Bundle, selecting these specific questions to form the group.

When used together, Project Filters and Question Bundles can deliver a highly-targeted view of performance. For example: view a Project Manager Scorecard, selecting only the Project Manager Bundle, and you have a report card of how well your project managers perform in categories for which they are explicitly responsible. Take a look at the picture below—we can see how each of our project managers perform in comparison to one another, in the specific duties that pertain to their role.

Another way to utilize Question Bundles is to compare Bundles to one another. In the example below, we’ve set up Bundles for the sales side, production side, and office side of our company. We’ve generated a Scorecard report comparing these Bundles to one another in order to see which facets of our company are delivering a great customer experience.

Late last week, we went live with some significant expansions to the Qlist — our directory of quality-minded building and real estate professionals. As part of our mission to elevate the stature of our profession to a level commensurate with its importance, we take great pleasure in celebrating and promoting our community of quality.

The Qlist is one of the ways we do that celebrating and promoting. Since we launched it in late 2006, it has quickly become the most frequently visited part of our website, and the significant majority of that traffic comes from consumers interested in finding the right builder, remodeler, or contractor.

Here’s a quick run-down of the recent enhancements:

First, we refined the member profiles themselves — both to make make them more attractive, and to accommodate the inclusion of project listings (see below). Here’s a snapshot of a Profile with lots of content (click here to see a sample profile).

Second, we introduced Listings. Listings enable members to show off their homes for sale and/or examples of their work. Every member gets one Listing at no charge, and there are additional nominal fees for including multiple Listings. You can read all the details in the Qlist section of your account “Preferences”. Here’s is an example of a Home for Sale (click here to see a sample listing).

And the last major change: welcome Canada! We’ve been providing customer satisfaction surveying for a number of Canadian companies for some time. Now our map reflects it. As of this writing, just one Canadian member has “opted-in” so far, and I hope more will do so once they read this news.

People have asked, “What influences the default sort order of members in the Qlist?” We wanted the Qlist to “reward” members with more prominent placement as they include more information in their profiles. So the more content you provide (i.e. Logos, Affiliations, Company Description, Customer Comments, etc) the more likely you are to show up near the top of the list. We expect that Listings and the photos in each listing will be especially interesting to the thousands of consumers that visit the Qlist, so their inclusion in your profile gets you an extra bump up as well.

Creating Listings within your Profile is easy. But if you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact us.