The latest news from GuildQuality.

Geoff Hartnett and I dropped by Pilot Builders (Eatonton, GA) earlier this week. We were in the area visiting with some prospects and poked our heads in unannounced.

The first thing Brenda pointed us to was their framed Guildmaster award on the wall. In 2007, we started giving out awards certificates for our Guildmasters in addition to the website recognition. This is the first one I’ve seen hung on a member’s wall. Nice!

We calculate our Guildmaster Awards using all customer feedback for the year (or potentially longer, for smaller volume members). Members that have had all of their customers surveyed are eligible, and two stats factor into the award: Response Rate and Recommendation Rate.

This weekend, the I’On Group will launch sales in Mixson in North Charleston, SC.

Mixson is the third Charleston-area community to be developed by the I’On team. With I’On in Mount Pleasant, Morris Square in historic downtown Charleston, and now Mixson in North Charleston, the I’On Group is setting a new standard for exceptional quality in real estate development. (of course, I am hardly unbiased)

Mixson’s homes will start in the $150s. Homes are selling in I’On for more than $1.5 million, so it seems that the I’On Group now has something for everyone.

I am very pleased to see GuildQuality gaining prominence in our members’ advertising. We definitely have noticed that our members’ websites have begun showing off their Guild membership or their recent customer satisfaction ratings, and it’s nice to see it in print as well.

I first spotted the trend a few months ago in Charleston Magazine, when about half a dozen of the homebuilders and remodelers that advertised therein touted their GuildQuality membership in their ad. This morning, our postman delivered an Atlanta home magazine to our front porch. Smack dab on the second page was an Advanced Kitchens advertisement.

If these ads are showing up in magazines on my front porch, I am sure they’re showing up elsewhere in the 40+ states in which are members are making service excellence a core component of their building company. If you’re advertising your GQ membership in print, please let me know about it. I’d appreciate the opportunity to show it off here on our website.

Last week, JD Power announced its “2007 Home Builder Satisfaction Ratings.” GuildQuality member John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods earned top honors in both markets in which the company was ranked: Atlanta and Charlotte.

According to JD Power’s customer satisfaction surveying, John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods outperformed 21 other Atlanta-area volume homebuilders. In Charlotte, Wieland also outperformed 21 other builders, and shares top honors with Mattamy Homes.

Another Charlotte-based GuildQuality member, Saussy Burbank, earned “among the best” ratings.

According to JD Power, “The study, which ranks builders in 34 separate housing markets across the U.S., is based on responses from 50,399 buyers of newly-built, single-family homes after they’ve lived in their homes from 4-18 months, on average.”

Given the spotlight JD Power has shined on volume homebuilders, the environment is growing more and more competitive (according to the study, overall scores were higher this year than last). Achieving top ratings in this study is a herculean accomplishment.

Congratulations to all the folks at John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods. Special recognition should go to Wieland’s VP of Customer Relations, Kelly Rulis (that’s her picture at the top of this post). She’s a passionate advocate for quality, and has done an exemplary job at connecting every customer-facing employee with their GuildQuality survey feedback. Also, Kelly and her team appreciate that the goal for their GQ surveying is not to get positive feedback (of course, that’s always nice), but to understand their homeowners, craft strategies for promoting a great customer experience, and take prompt action whenever there’s a misstep.

Though not our largest member, Wieland is among our most active in terms of user authentications. I attribute this to their large number of employees using the system. Their customer-facing employees have immediate access to the customer feedback that’s relevant to them. While we pride ourselves in the quality of our reporting, we know that nothing can more positively impact the service your team delivers than simply sharing with them your customers’ feedback in real-time.

While JD Power’s study is limited to volume homebuilders only, GuildQuality provides customer satisfaction surveying and performance reporting for building professionals of all sizes, be they homebuilders, remodelers, or real estate developers. Our community of quality-minded building professionals includes over 500 companies in over 40 states.

Last week, several of us visited the Queen City to spend an evening with some of our members in the area.

We had a strong turnout from our Charlotte-area members. I recognize it’s a big investment for people to take time away from their personal lives, and I appreciate everyone coming.

Thanks to Ben Yeakley of Dienst Custom Homes; Scott Whitlock, Tyler Mahan, and Steven Whitlock of Hubert Whitlock Builders; Scott Dirkenschneider of Meeting Street Homes; Fran Hillhouse and Bob Zweier of Saussy Burbank; Jim Burbank of JCB Urban (and Saussy Burbank); and Maria Skipper and Kristian Kellogg of The McAllister Group.

These meetings are great opportunities for our members to share fellowship and experiences with other quality-minded building professionals, and invaluable opportunities for me and our team to get direct, face-to-face feedback from the people that rely on our customer satisfaction surveying.

Thanks very much for coming!

Last week, GuildQuality went live with GQ v2.6. Included were two great new additions; Mail Survey Cards and Survey Aliasing.

Mail Survey Cards go out to each of our members’ customers following the “ripe date”, the date on which their survey becomes active. On each card is a unique survey code and a url (http://www.guildquality.com/mysurvey/). For customers that have not completed the survey yet, they can go to the url provided, enter in their survey code (right), and complete their survey online. For customers that have already completed their survey, they are now able to go to the same url provided, enter in their code, and view their survey responses. In addition, our members are able to customize the messaging and logo printed on these cards. We sent our first batch out at the end of August and the response, thus far, has been great.

Survey Aliasing allows those members who build under different names depending upon the project type, development, or area, to create Survey Aliases. When a project is added, members specify which Survey Alias they would like used for each survey tied to that project. This alias is used in every step of the surveying process from email to phone and on down to Mail Survey Cards. When creating Survey Aliases, associated logos for each alias can also be uploaded. The alias and the corresponding logo are printed on each Mail Survey Card as they go out to members’ customers.

We are excited about these new features and look forward to seeing our quality-minded members use them.

We live in a great neighborhood. No, I don’t live in Bellagio, Italy (pictured above). Nevetheless, my neighborhood has a lot in common with (and a lot to learn from) Bellagio. Some reasons why I love my home:

1) We can easily walk to a more than a dozen restaurants, a movie theater, several parks and playgrounds, a bunch of churches, a library, two ice cream parlors, a middle school, restaurants, stores, and a number of our friends’ houses;

2) We have just about every kind of great shop you could want: furniture, clothes, gifts, convenience store/gas station, pharmacy, Ace Hardware, Trader Joe’s Grocery, etc (though we are sorely lacking an excellent outdoor store);

3) Several teenage babysitters live on our street;

4) The local firefighters are gracious and frequent hosts to my three year old son;

5) Many kids walk to school;

6) My commute is 1.4 miles;

7) There is a diverse housing stock that includes both giant and tiny houses, affordable and fancy apartments, and condos and townhouses of all kinds.

I think these things are great. But, while I think just about everyone in my neighborhood would agree with me, people in general seem to try to limit the very density and walkability that make our neighborhood so wonderful.

Our recent community newsletter was filled with some earnest articles about what our neighborhood is doing in an attempt to make my life better. The big recurring themes revolve around the restriction of land use diversity. Whether people are pursuing less apartments, less re-development, less commercial, less density, or just plain less people, the argument is a variation of the same theme: “More consistency and less diversity will make our neighborhood a better place.”

I don’t buy that argument. For an inspiring summary of what happens when a community invests its energy in cultivating enduring beauty and quality, and has no time left to worry about restricting density and diversity, check out my brother’s recent post on Bellagio, Italy.