The latest news from GuildQuality.

Macky Hill had the foresight to snap some construction pics ten years ago. He recently had the presence of mind to capture the moment from the exact same spot ten years later. April of 1998 was about two months after the first houses started in I’On. That is (was) mine on the right. Click here or on the images to see a few more shots.

DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen recently announced that we’ll be taking care of their customer satisfaction surveying. Last year, a group of their franchisees test drove our service. That was a great experience for both us and them, and it led to the finalization earlier this year of our working relationship.

I’m excited about this relationship for a number of reasons. First and foremost, everyone I’ve met at DreamMaker’s corporate office has impressed me. They are all sharp friendly people.

Second, their franchisees are enthusiastic. We’ve had a great reception from all the franchisees we’ve met so far.

Third, I like working with franchises in general. They intuitively appreciate that their reputation is their greatest asset, and they take it very seriously.

As DreamMaker’s president, Doug Dwyer, put it: “Using GuildQuality surveys will enable us at a corporate level to make sure the customers are completely satisfied with the DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen brand [and] at a local level, the surveys will provide a forum for our franchise owners to receive feedback on their work.”

GuildQuality’s survey response rate presently stands at 72.0%. We use a pretty straightforward calculation of response rate: The number of customers who responded divided by the number of customers attempted.

Our response rate over time. Roughly 50% respond within two weeks of us starting our process; 60% within 30 days; 70% within 60 days; and then we gain a few extra points after that. Those late respondents are generally customers who let their builder or remodeler know that they missed the original survey and would like to receive the survey again.

Delivering feedback in real-time. As soon as we receive a survey response, the appropriate person (or people) in the member’s office receives an email notification with the response details. At that moment, all of the member’s online reporting is updated to reflect the new response. Those that don’t receive notifications, can see the history of recent responses on the dashboard of their account.

Mail, email, and phone. Every customer receives a survey mailer. If our members provide us with email addresses and phone numbers, their customers will also receive surveys that way.

Our telephone surveying office is in lovely Eatonton, GA. By complete coincidence, it is in the same office building as one of our members.

We get lots of comments. In addition to ratings, customers provide about 25 words of commentary per response. Overall 65% of respondents elaborate with comments. That percentage is lower for email and mail responses, and much higher for phone.

I snagged a few recent comments at random to give you a better idea of the sort of things we hear:

“Darrel, the project manager was wonderful. He did everything very promptly and professionally. Jenny was very informative about the neighborhood and the homes.”

“I was particularly taken with their ability to adapt to the inevitable ‘gotchas’ that show up in almost any job. They were very flexible and extremely accommodating to our needs.”

“They just have too many people working for them messing things up.”

“I love the big kitchen and pantry. I also love my balcony porch on the second floor.”

“We still have an outstanding sprinkler issue. They were supposed to come look at it sometime soon.”

I’ve written a little more about our surveying process and customer satisfaction surveying in general here, here, and here.

Strobel Design Build enjoyed a nice feature in this month’s Remodeling Magazine. Don Strobel discusses some of the marketing strategies he employs now (targeted and strategically timed direct mail campaigns, website design, web analytics tracking) as well as the things he has planned for the website (password-assigned client pages and customer testimonials).

My three year old son happened to notice a new advertisement in one of our neighborhood parks.

DogGoneHandy is the handyman division of an in-town Atlanta-area remodeler.

I thought this was clever enough to justify snapping a picture with my camera phone, but at the time, I didn’t intend to post about it. After leaving the park, though, I noticed two DogGoneHandy trucks and several workers taking care of business at a house right around the corner.

This is great marketing, but only so long as the dispenser is clean and full!

On January 22, Steve Palmer of Bowen Family Homes took on the responsibility of President of the second largest home builders association in the country — the Greater Atlanta HBA.

According to their website, Bowen Family Homes is the 5th largest builder in Metro Atlanta, the 25th largest privately owned builder in the country, and the 83rd largest among all builders nationwide.

Steve joined Bowen Family Homes in 1999 and has most recently served the GAHBA as Vice President. Bowen started using GuildQuality for their customer satisfaction surveying in mid-2005.