Quality-minded builders, remodelers, developers and contractors rely on our customer satisfaction surveying to help them provide exceptional service

A great thing about web-based businesses, and the SaaS business model in general, is our ability to deliver upgrades at no additional cost to the customer and with no interruption to their service.

Over the last few months, we’ve chosen the smallest and most impactful enhancements we could tackle, and turned them into some bite-sized development projects. The result has been three rounds of enhancements since May.

You can read about the prior two releases here and here. Our latest release was yesterday, and the two biggest things you’ll likely notice are

1) significant enhancements to notifications and notification preferences (GQ login required).

2) dramatic reduction in the load time of peer comparisons (GQ login required).

Members can read all the details of the most recent release in our member forum here (GQ login required). Thanks to David and Rob for their super work on this most recent project and all they’ve done to improve our members’ experience over the past few months.

Last night, I returned from visiting with the developers and builders at two Virginia communities. Virginia is beautiful, and Bundoran Farm (pictured below) and the Homestead Preserve seem to be two of the most beautiful spots in the Commonwealth.

Yesterday afternoon, I spoke to the builders, architects, and development team at the Homestead Preserve. I spoke a good bit about the relationship between customer satisfaction, marketing, and profit. But the overarching theme of my talk was, as always, the importance of creating a culture of quality in your building or development organization. We are creating homes for people, and it is our obligation to do the absolute best job we possibly can.

Exceptional customer service brings us a stronger reputation and greater profits, and while that should be reason enough to create a culture of quality, we can’t lose site of the profound and lasting impact we have on our customers and our community — our work creates homes for our people.

GuildQuality originally assisted Bundoran Farm in evaluating candidates for their preferred builder program. Now that Bundoran Farm and the Homestead Preserve are underway, we’re now helping them evaluate custom homebuilders that are interested in becoming a part of their team. They seek to work with the best builders in their community, and GuildQuality helps them to identify who among the candidates most consistently delivers an exceptional customer experience.

GuildQuality got its start doing this type of work in Charleston, SC at I’On, and I am always eager for opportunities to return to my roots. We now work in this capacity with about a dozen community developers around the country (most recently with Mount Washington Resort in the great state of New Hampshire).

The significant majority of GuildQuality’s surveying is on behalf of building companies who rely on us to manage and improve their businesses. Though helping developers to recruit the right builders is a smaller portion of our overall surveying, it is critically important to our mission to elevate the stature of our profession to a level commensurate with its importance.

Special thanks to Joe Barnes and Casey Williams of Celebration Associates for their hospitality (Joe wrote a little about my visit here). They have a great group of builders working on both projects, and I am excited to follow their progress as they realize their vision for the communities. I encourage you to check out their Bundoran Farm blog. They have some great stuff going on up there.

The last Guildmaster certificate is signed. My hand is tired. Thanks to Geoff Hartnett and our friends at Imagers for getting these together and making this happen.

On June 21, HGTVpro aired a great feature on Nashville-based remodeler and Remodelers Advantage Rountables member Trace Ventures. In the 4 minute segment titled “Unique Incentives”, Art and Martha Stinson describe how they use GuildQuality to incorporate customer satisfaction into their employee bonus program.

We’ve been waiting for this video to emerge on the HGTVpro website, and it’s finally here.

A great many of our members tie bonuses to customer satisfaction. Trace Ventures’ program strikes me as an excellent way to tie together customer satisfaction and profit with compensation. If you’re doing something similar, please share your story.

June 2008 was a good month for our members’ survey activity. The above chart describes our monthly volume of surveying relative to our previous all-time high in November of 2007.

We have more than 500 members throughout North America, and I believe their activity is somewhat reflective of the greater building industry. Of course, our members are the kinds of businesses that value customer feedback enough to invest in customer satisfaction surveying, so our activity may be more a reflection of what’s going on among the best building companies out there. With that in mind, perhaps we provide more of a leading indicator than a reflection of what’s happening today.

We have been fortunate to have continuously grown our membership throughout the doldrums of the last 18 months. But I can’t say the same of our survey activity. Though our previous all-time high was November, we clearly showed signs of stumbling prior to that. Perhaps more tellingly, same-member-survey activity began declining in March 2007, but our net membership growth drowned that out and carried total survey activity higher for another couple quarters.

Two months after we hit our peak in November, we hit our trough. Year-to-date, January’s survey activity was our low point, and we’ve been eeking up ever since. I am hopeful we’ll see that trend continue. Clearly, it is better for GuildQuality, but high survey volume is a very positive sign for our membership. Survey activity represents a roughly one-month lag proximation of our members’ contracts and closings (our two most popular survey types).

I looked at this information a number of ways — by same member activity, by closings only, by volume homebuilders, etc — and not all trends pointed in the same direction. But I saw enough positive news to make a bold prediction: January was the bottom of the housing market and we are climbing our way out.

A couple of the main factors that influence my positive attitude:

Reason #1: After about nine months of steep declines in survey activity for our total membership, we’ve seen not just some steady recent gains, but June activity was the highest of all time (as shown above).

Reason #2: The chart below shows average survey activity among our 20 largest homebuilders. Our volume homebuilders have been our hardest hit, but after two consecutive quarters of dismal drops, they finally showed some slight improvement. I’m thinking this is a true turn upward, rather than just a Spring bump.

Historically, the first month of each quarter usually shows a drop over the last month of the preceding quarter, so I’m not holding my breath for another increase in July. But the trend over the last few months looks promising, and I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll end the coming quarter with another improvement — both for GuildQuality and our members.

As the birthday of the United States approaches, I thought I would share one of my favorite stories of the Revolution. Many years ago, I stumbled across an officer’s account of the Battle of Fort Sullivan on June 28, 1776. Shortly after our success at Bunker Hill, British warships advanced toward Charleston with the intention of conquering the port city, thereby isolating the South and cutting off a key supply route for the rebellious colonies. If successful, the British would strangle the nascent rebellion before it had a chance to blossom into a revolution.

A single fort stood in the way of the British: A small unnamed and incomplete outpost on Sullivan’s Island. The fort was led by a maverick Colonel William Moultrie and his young band of inexperienced and passionate patriots.

All predicted the British would rout the young revolutionaries and plow forward to victory in Charleston. Without their important port, the rebellious colonies would inevitably surrender. But as it turned out, Providence and the Spirit of 76 would prove too much for the British.

Though the underdog patriots emerged victorious, it wasn’t easy. And as with all battles, it came with great sacrifice. An early casualty of the engagement was a young soldier remembered only as Sgt McDaniel.

All we know about the soldier are his actions in the last moments of his life: When a British canon ball tore through his torso and drove him into the sandy earth, McDaniel’s last words were not expressions of anguish, regret, or pain. Instead, he raised his bloody body up onto his knees and with his last breath, he bellowed:

“Fight on my brave boys; Do not let liberty expire with me today!”

And his boys did fight on. They defeated the British battleships and drove the most powerful military in the world back to England. Their victory preserved Charleston for four more years — long enough for the Revolution to mature and the new nation to emerge victorious.

Thanks Colonel Moultrie. Thanks General Washington. Thanks Ben Franklin. Thanks John and Abigail. Thanks TJ. Thanks Molly Pitcher, Nathan Hale, and the Swamp Fox. And thanks to the unknown patriots like Sgt McDaniel and the thousands since who have given the ultimate gift.

Many have observed that “in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” This July 4th, let’s recall the great gift our patriots gave us — the freedom to choose the course of our republic — and let’s resolve to make their sacrifices worthwhile.