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

Click here to register for our 45 minute webinar on Thursday, April 30 at 1:30pm EST.

People are talking about your company on the web. They’re sharing feedback that helps them make informed decisions about who to hire and who to buy from. You can choose to ignore the discussion, be a part of it, or better yet, ENCOURAGE it.

In this webinar, I’ll provide an overview of the prominent social networks and share my thoughts on the emerging role of social media in the homebuilding, remodeling, and contracting industry.

I’ll also give a demonstration of the new GQ features that can help you easily engage in, inform, and promote the online chatter about your business.

Long time member Harth Builders is featured two times in April’s Remodeling here (on Harth’s estimating template) and here (on slippage and grippage). Greg Harth is also on the cover of the print edition:

Ever wonder about the tiny little bar next to your company name on the Qlist? That’s an indicator of your “profile strength” and the higher the profile strength, the closer to the top of the Qlist you appear in our default sort order.

Broadly speaking, two things influence profile strength: Consistent surveying and Profile content. Along with the recent enhancements to our reporting system and marketing features, we tweaked this algorithm to give additional credit for survey consistency.

More details:

Members get lots of credit for surveying on a regular basis. We do this not on volume (as we have both very small and very large members) but on consistency. We also take credit away if you’ve been inactive for long time. So the lesson here: Stay current with your surveying and enjoy a higher rank.

We also give credit for just about every piece of content you publish to your profile: If you have a logo in there, you get points. If you have a listing (examples of work or homes for sale), you get points. If you link to affiliations or social media, you get points. Etc. The lesson here: the more content you provide for consumers, the higher you’ll rank.

Last year was our first year at Remodeling Magazine’s Remodeling Leadership Conference. After the conference, we started a discussion with the editors about creating a customer satisfaction award. That discussion bore fruit, and we’re excited to be returning to this year’s Remodeling Leadership Conference to help celebrate the announcement of this new award, and to congratulate the winners.

Remodeling’s Big50 Service Excellence Award was created to recognize exemplary customer service in the remodeling profession. A remodeler’s ability to deliver a consistently exceptional customer experience is worth recognizing and celebrating. Not only does it improve the lives of those customers who experience it directly, but it solidifies the business’ reputation as an accomplished professional – one worth referring and one worthy of repeat business. And for all of those entrepreneurs who make a living improving, expanding, repairing or rebuilding homes, the great work of a wonderful remodeler elevates the stature of our entire profession.

Four remodelers will be recipients of the 2009 Service Excellence Award. To identify the winners, GuildQuality interviewed more than 2,000 customers about their remodeling experience. The competition was unbelievably fierce, with the 50 candidates being among the most accomplished remodelers in North America.

We look forward to congratulating the award winners at the event. If you intend to be at this year’s Remodeling Leadership Conference in Alexandria, please let us know!

As part of last night’s release, we also upgraded the Qlist profiles to allow members the option of including the social media links. Click here to see GuildQuality’s very own Qlist Profile with access to our Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, Kudzu, and Google Local pages.

Way back in 1998, a brand new publication called Coastal Living Magazine featured it’s first ever “Idea House” in a brand new neighborhood called I’On. The Idea House was both the first home completed in the neighborhood and my own first ever house. Many homes since, it remains my favorite house of all time.

This year, Coastal Living returns to I’On with the Coastal Living Idea Cottage, built by long time member Structures Building Company, and designed by Historical Concepts, one of the greatest architectural firms practicing today.

Unlike 11 years ago, this time around, the Idea Cottage has its very own blog.

As of tomorrow morning, your Scorecard will offer you a new way to monitor trends in your performance.

Previously, you could track what percentage of your customers were happy or very happy, and you could separately track what percentage were unhappy. Now, you can use an index (working title: “GuildQuality Index” or “GQI”) to present a representation that also gives weight to the percentage of folks who are unhappy.

The GQI presents the percentage of your answers that are “4″ minus the percentage that are “0,” “1,” or “2.”

From a trend reporting perspective, using the GQI rather than a “Percentage of answers that were 4 (Strongly Agree)” accentuates your changes over time, just as using a “Percentage of answers that were 4″ accentuates your changes in performance relative to using a “Percentage of answers that were 3 or 4.”

It is also useful to segment your customers based on those who are your biggest fans versus those who aren’t as enthusiastic. Of note, simultaneous with this improvement, we are introducing a social media feature that helps our members to deepen their connection with their biggest advocates via social networks and consumer rating sites.

This enhancement comes on the heels of expanded exporting features and better sort functionality in the Scorecard.

Late this evening, we’ll go live with some enhancements that help our members leverage new media to stay better connected with past customers and become more accessible and compelling to prospects.

When I talk about social media, I am referring to two broad categories of web-applications that are built entirely on user generated content: Social Networks and Consumer Rating Sites.

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are helping builders, contractors, and remodelers to connect with their customers. John Wieland is tweeting and blogging about his Get Housing Moving tour. Henderer Design + Build is collecting fans on Facebook. And here at GuildQuality, I’m soliciting product feedback from more than 100 of our users via a LinkedIn discussion group.

Consumer rating sites like Kudzu and Yelp are helping consumers find reputable businesses, and they’re also providing search engines with highly relevant content. Google and Yahoo give special consideration to consumer reviews — lots of reviews (good or bad) can drive you closer to the top of search results. So if your public ratings are largely favorable, that is likely to give a consumer the extra confidence they need to reach out to you.

Connecting you with your promoters: With tonight’s new release, we have overhauled the page that displays after someone completes a survey (or returns to our website to review a survey they completed in the past).

Beginning tomorrow, if your survey respondent gave you high marks, we can serve up the social media sites of your choice. On the social network side of things, we’ll enable them to follow you on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn, or become a fan on Facebook. it can connect your survey respondents with the social media sites of your choice. You can also include links to your profile page on several consumer ratings sites, thereby encouraging your happiest customers to spread the word about their positive experience with you company.

And as with our other marketing resources, you’ll be able to track how much social media traffic we have created for you in the marketing section of our application.

If your customer did not give you high marks, they’ll see a simple “thank you for responding” message. Also, we previously used the post-survey-submit page to solicit feedback from folks about their experience with our surveying process. And we got a TON of great commentary. We’re still doing that, but rather than the rating request being the primary focus of the post-survey-submit page, it is a secondary request at the bottom of the page.

I am excited about this new release, as I think it opens a lot of doors for our members, your customers, and GuildQuality to further connect people with information relevant to the betterment of our profession. To manage which content is displayed to your customers, visit the new Social Media section of your account (this link will start working on April 21).

Last week, Mark Miles and I returned from Minneapolis, where we presented GuildQuality to Pella’s 70 Branch Champions. Our presentation at the Pella Conference was part of a larger discussion of some impressive expansions of the Pella Certified Contractor program.

Over the last few months, GuildQuality has been working with the Pella team to create some specialized services for their contractors. Our mutual goal is to provide them with some resources to help them deliver the best possible customer experience.

I’m especially excited about this relationship, because it draws heavily on the GUILD part of GuildQuality. The work of each Pella Certified Contractor reflects on more than just the Pella Brand — it reflects on every other PCC as well. Our work in helping each PCC succeed will help every member of this elite group of contractors.

For more details about GuildQuality’s special services for Pella Certified Contractors, please contact us.

From the good folks at Pella:

It is time for the Pella Pro Expo!

This is your last chance to register for a day full of fun, food, and prizes! This year we are bringing in over 18 local vendors with a focus on sustainable design, offering up to 3 CEU credits, serving barbeque, and offering a chance to win a new Toyota truck and many other prizes. We will also hold installation demonstrations of Pella products and have speakers Patrick O’Toole from Qualified Remodeler (40 Ways to Make Your Phone Ring) and Mark Richardson, president of CASE Design & Remodeling and author of How Fit is Your Business. We will be holding a special prize drawing for the builders and architects that bring in a current set of plans for bid.

Continued education courses will begin at 2:00 pm, and there will be a limited number of seats per course per time slot. The course schedule has been attached to this email, but additional information can be found at the Pella Pro Expo site. This is also the site to register for the Expo.

To register for courses, please contact Andrea Beck (abeck at pellasoutheast dot com) with the name and time of the presentation or with the presentation’s assigned number and letter (Courses that begin at 2:00 are 2A, 2B, or 2C. Courses that begin at 3:15 are 3A, 3B, or 3C. Courses that begin at 5:00 are 5A, 5B, 5C).

We hope to see you there!

Pella Southeast (click for directions)
l2605 North Berkeley Lake Rd, Suite 400
Duluth, GA 3009

At GuildQuality, the significant majority of our work is focused on one of four area: surveying customers, continually enhancing our reporting system, growing our community of quality, and celebrating excellence in the building, remodeling, and real estate profession. The celebrating part is one of my favorites.

We do that by talking about the great things our members have accomplished (in this blog and through press releases), and by helping our members promote their exceptional performance or highlight their commitment to superior service (with our Qlist and customer report).

A large number of our members have taken the next step and started promoting their membership in our community of quality. Obviously, we love this, as it has a big impact on consumer awareness of the GuildQuality brand. This morning, I reviewed all of our web traffic, and was not surprised to see that, in the last 90 days, more than 5% of all visitors to guildquality.com were referred to us from one of our members’ websites.

Most of the time, these websites simply indicate somewhere that the member uses GuildQuality to survey customers, and help the team ensure that they’re delivering an exceptional customer experience. Often, they are referencing a Guildmaster Award, and occasionally, they are showing off our nifty Guildmember Logo. I encourage all of this — you can find some great resources for promoting your membership in the marketing section of your account.

Following are the top 10 members from the last 90 days (in alphabetical order) that refer traffic to GuildQuality.com. It’s a diverse group, including a Top 400 homebuilder, one of Canada’s leading remodelers, a Southern Living Custom Homebuilder, a replacement contractor that’s new to GuildQuality, and one of our first members from way back in 2003:

Amsted Design Build Ottowa, ON

Classic Remodeling Charleston, SC

Conaway Homes Whitehouse, TX

Craig Custom Builders Wayne, NJ

Distinctive Remodeling Roswell, GA

McClurg Remodeling & Construction Services Marcellus, NY

TR Building & Remodeling Redding & New Canaan, CT

Twin Cities Siding Professionals St. Paul, MN

Villa Builders Arnold, MD

Wayne Harbin Builder Williamsburg & Yorktown, VA

Thanks to all the members that are helping us raise awareness of membership in our community of quality, and thanks especially to these ten that are leading the way!

In the Customer Satisfaction Reporting sections of your account, you may notice a few subtle upgrades.

First, we now show the survey response rate for the data set represented on the page (this is on all pages);

Second, on the Scorecard, you can now sort the data by number of survey responses;

Third,on the Scorecard, when you are viewing lots of question answers represented together, we’re also showing you how many surveys all of those answers came from. As an example, in the 2009 Q1 bar above, you now know that those 2,645 answers came from 155 customers.

Two more upgrades that aren’t represented in the image above:

We modified the survey itself so that “Clear my response” is now “Not Applicable”. This makes it more obvious to respondents that they can skip questions.

We enhanced the Projects & Surveying filters so you can now pull a report of all projects or customers who don’t have some filters listed. This makes it easy to update project information for the random projects that didn’t go into the system with all the right fields (project manager, salesperson, division, etc).