The latest news from GuildQuality.

James Lileks is a favorite writer of mine - he posts a regular column for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and his daily Bleat entry is a regular stop on my reading list. He’s incomparable at accounting daily life events - always interesting, always insightful, always funny.

Today he writes about getting the oil changed in his car. After jumping through all the hoops that getting an oil change now entails - ie, turning down every service imaginable, trying to convince them that you really just want an oil change - he’s asked to call an 800 number, take a survey, and be entered to win $500 in free gas. But here’s what the manager said: “If you could take this survey, it’ll take about five minutes. And if you could give us a 5 on the responses –” he circled the number 5, printed on the back of the entry sheet – “We’d appreciate it.”

Lileks reacted the same way I would: “Nothing makes me want to give them a four more than being told they’d like a five.” We always encourage our members to let their customers know that they’ll be contacted regarding their experience - it’s a simple, effective way to increase response rates. But asking for high scores is a sure way to get low scores!

A friend forwarded me an excellent article [pdf only] on customer satisfaction surveying. Rarely do I come across articles that are concise (two pages!), well-written, and broadly applicable to a multitude of professions. Leslie Wood of Les Wood Associates makes the strong case that few things can so powerfully contribute to your ability to deliver excellence and sell above and beyond your competition than customer surveying.

Bill Essert, owner of Wooden Window in Oakland, CA, has been restoring and manufacturing high-end custom windows for almost 30 years. But now he has a new woodworking machine that’s allowing him to better meet the needs of his clients, increase his company’s productivity and, as a result, add a nice spark to his company’s revenues.

For example, a recent project presented some significant security concerns - the house has a safe room and requires visitors to enter through security checkpoints, and its owners needed 8 doors refurbished. Previously, this job would have required three days to complete with a 2-man crew, but with Bill’s new ‘worker’ the job was finished in a single day. And the house was secure before 3 pm. I’m sure these security-conscious clients appreciated the quick and unobtrusive work made possible by Wooden Window’s innovative practices.

Valeria Maltoni wrote a great brief piece at FastCompany.com on a recent car repair/replacement rental experience. If you are like me, you are thinking, “Man, I get the heebie jeebies just thinking about having to deal with getting my car fixed and renting a replacement for a few days.”

Sadly, that’s the same kind of feeling folks have when they’re about to purchase a home or embark on a remodeling job. WHY is that? Shouldn’t they expect something better?

My favorite part of this little article was not Maltoni’s great articulation of the impact of poor service (”[allowing your service to slip causes a] subtraction of value, allowing your brand to slip in your customers’ minds”), but it was the perspective of the article. If you need to get grounded–to put yourself back into your customers’ shoes–try to do what she did in this article:

Think about what your customers experience, beginning with your first interaction.

Is that the kind of experience YOU would want to have? Is that the kind of experience you would want your mother to have?

I had a great time watching the Masters over the weekend - I think all golfers get some joy out of watching the worlds best struggle against a course like the rest of us usually do. With the winner shooting one-over par for the tournament, one commentator perceptively noted that par is largely an arbitrary number, because the quality of one score really only depends on what everyone else is shooting.

In a similar vein, builder and remodelers should use industry benchmarking as a key component in assessing performance. Just as a score in a competitive round of golf, or understanding a written passage, requires an appreciation of context, so performance data should not be analyzed in a vacuum.

Our reporting systems allows members to compare their performance against a customized peer group based upon company profile (ie. remodeler, custom builder, or volume builder), geographic area, annual volume, and price range. In the screenshot above, the top bar represents a single company’s average performance score in each category, while the bottom bar represents the peer group average. To the right of these graphs is a percentile ranking, which tells you the percentage of your peer group that you’re outperforming. We can also set up peer groups of companies that belong to specific groups such as Remodelers Advantage or a Builder 20 group.

If you want to know how well you’re really doing, understanding where you stand against your competition is a good place to start.