Archive for 2008

Qtips: Using Project Filters and Question Bundles to Enhance your Depth of Reporting

by Geoff Graham

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.

Expansions to the Qlist

by Geoff Graham

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.

“Cooking up Sales”

by Geoff Graham

The following post is courtesy of the Remodelers Advantage PowerTips newsletter. RA is hosting two day Sales Workshop (“Building and Managing a Winning Sales Team”) on November 20 and 21 in the Baltimore area. To find out more, click here.

Cooking Up Sales

Here’s a fun and easy way to do some soft-sell marketing: Host a dinner for clients and prospects – and let the clients do the talking (and selling) for you.

For the past 4 years, the folks at Thompson Remodeling, Inc., in Grand Rapids, Mich., have been hosting monthly dinners in their well-equipped kitchen showroom. They hire a husband-and-wife team of chefs whom they’ve known for 15 years and spend a couple hundred dollars to have the chefs prepare a sumptuous dinner for a couple of past clients, a couple of current clients, and a pair of prospects.

“During dinner, we don’t talk about business at all,” says Ben Thompson, general manager of the design/build remodeling firm. “We talk about hobbies, favorite meals and recipes, and everyone’s families. The past and current clients say nice things about us to the prospects. We sit back, keep our mouths shut, and we get sales.”

Lately, Thompson’s financial planner has been hosting dinners at the showroom. “It works pretty much the same way as our company-hosted dinners do,” says the remodeler, “except the planner pays for the meal and it’s his past, current, and prospective clients who join us in the kitchen. I’m there, too, and I put in a good word for him because he’s done great work for me. We sometimes get sales from those dinners, too.”

The client cuisine nights are becoming legendary. Recently, Thompson’s CPA called him up and told him he’d like to host a dinner, too. The remodeler is all for it. “It’s a phenomenal way to connect with people,” he says. “We’re providing a service for businesses we believe in and we get to spend time with people who might be potential clients for our company.”

Looking for other ways to improve your sales team? Building and Managing A Winning Sales Team PowerMeeting has the answers. This 2-day meeting in Baltimore, MD will put you on track to have hard hitting, high performing players on your team.

Atlanta Member Meeting in November

GuildQuality and BuildTopia are hosting a Member Meeting at the Ecco Restaurant in Midtown Atlanta. We hope that you can join us on November 12, 2008 at 6:30pm for heavy appetizers and cocktails.

Geoff Graham will be sharing information about GuildQuality’s latest happenings, along with our plans for the near future. We are especially interested in hearing your feedback about GuildQuality, our services, and how we can better serve you.

Please RSVP by November 7th. Also, we’d like to keep the event reasonably intimate, so we encourage you to bring up to three additional people from your company. Thanks for being a part of our community of quality-minded builders, remodelers, and real estate developers. We hope to see you very soon.

Home Depot focusing on Customer Experience to “get back on track”

by Geoff Graham

The AJC reports on Home Depot’s renewed focus on the customer experience, and the efforts of new EVP Marvin Ellison to get the retailing giant “back on track.” According to an analyst quoted in the article, it seems to be working.

For the second quarter, Home Depot reported that its “net promoter scores” had increased. This is the number of customers who felt they had a very positive shopping experience, minus the number of customers who had a negative one. Home Depot gets this number through customer surveys. In the second quarter, that number was up by nearly 5 percentage points.

[Preview] What are building and real estate professionals thinking right now?

by Geoff Graham

To all those that have responded to our “State of the Market Survey” so far, THANKS! More than 100 of you have offered your thoughts (quantitative responses along with hundreds of generous comments) on the current state of the market, your forecasts for the next six months, what you see as emerging and waning trends, and what you are doing to navigate the rough waters.

I’ll keep the survey open for a few more days before compiling all the results into a meaningful report, but I thought I’d post a brief preview of some of the feedback…

UPDATE: You can see more about this report here.

The 2009 Guildmaster Awards

UPDATE: Apply now for the 2009 Guildmaster Awards. Members should submit their application by logging into their account and clicking on the link on their dashboard. Non-members should fill out this application. See past Guildmaster Award and read more about the awards here.

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We’ve been producing our Guildmaster Awards more or less the same way since we launched GuildQuality’s reporting system about five years ago. Well, we are bigger now than we were then, and judging from our experience with it last year, it is time for a change.

Streamlining the application process. For our 2009 Awards, rather than considering EVERY Guildmember, we’re considering only those who opt-in to consideration and agree to all the terms and conditions up-front.

If you are a Guildmaster from 2008, you may recall that it took us some time to finalize the awards and get the word out. A significant bottleneck for us was in running down consent forms and signoff sheets. With our new “Call For Entries” process, we’ll get all the signoffs BEFORE we start the evaluation. This will cut down on the number of companies we have to scrutinize (theoretically), and it will absolutely reduce the amount of calls, letters, faxes, that have to go back and forth between GuildQuality and our members.

With the new process, we expect to announce and begin promoting award winners by the end of February. If you are interested in being considered for a 2009 Guildmaster Award, keep an eye out for the Call for Entries form! We’ll post one within your account in the next few days, and send out a few email reminders about it between then and the end of the year.

Expanding the Awards. We have a second big change coming to the 2009 Guildmaster Awards: non-members will be able to apply. As always, members won’t be subject to additional fees for awards consideration, but there will be application fees involved for non-members.

Preview: Qlist Listings and Upgraded Profiles

by Geoff Graham

In about a week, we’ll introduce a significant upgrade to our Qlist — our directory of members and their profiles.

Our mission is to elevate the stature of the building and real estate profession to a level commensurate with its importance, and our Qlist plays a nice role in our efforts. Through our service, we help companies enhance the quality of their service, and the Qlist helps us to promote their membership in our community of quality.

Thousands of consumers visit the Qlist on a regular basis to learn more about companies they are considering. Whether they are buying a home or choosing a contractor for a remodeling project, a roof replacement, or a custom built home, the Qlist offers consumers another perspective on our members.

As an example, here is the most visited member profile of the last 30 days, and here are some tips for how to take advantage of the Qlist to celebrate your own business’ commitment to quality.

Next week, we’re introducing Listings into each of our members’ profiles. So very soon, we’ll not only be promoting their companies, but also their work. Members will be able to post homes for sale as well as examples of their work, complete with descriptions, maps, and plenty of photos.

And one more addition: By popular demand, the Qlist will also include profiles for our Canadian members.

Deconstruction Economics

by Geoff Graham

Nina Patel of Remodeling has a nice piece on deconstruction in remodeling. I first became aware of the practice when visiting with Melton Construction in Boulder, CO. Another member, Talmadge Construction, is prominently featured in this article.

As dumping costs rise, deconstruction has become more and more economically prudent — not to mention the obvious environmental benefits: reduce, re-use, recycle. The article offers some great advice for remodelers interested in the process.

Gen Y wants intown living

by Geoff Graham

This AJC describes Robert Charles Lesser’s assessment of Gen Y buyer preferences. The article in a nutshell:

Many in Gen Y have little interest in the lawn mowing, cul de sac life that’s characteristic of so much of Atlanta. At least for now.

Instead, Gen Y wants high-tech convenience and communication, walkability, green building standards and diversity. They’ll sacrifice space, and some will even pay more, to incorporate those qualities into their lives, real estate experts say.

That’s good news for infill redevelopment efforts. “Intown areas and inner suburbs will really remain on an upward trajectory” when the housing market turns around, said Sarah Kirsch, senior principal at Robert Charles Lesser.

Many others have observed similar trends among Gen X buyers and empty nesters. A couple examples here and here.