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

The NAHBR today announced that for the first time since 2005, more remodelers are predicting an improvement in the market than are expecting a decline.

The NAHBR’s findings describe a positive trend that we also saw in our own Guildmember Confidence Survey from March.

We recently published some information about the correlation between customer satisfaction, growth, and business failure. In response to some questions, here’s an elaboration on that post, with an attempt to answer the question, “How much more likely am I to succeed or fail, based on the quality of my reputation?

If your recommendation rate was less than 80% one year ago, there is a 79% chance (about 4 in 5) that you are still in business.

If your recommendation rate was between 80% and 90%, there is a 86% chance that you are still in business.

If your recommendation rate was between 90% and 95%, there is a 96.5% chance that you are still in business.

If your recommendation rate was greater than 95% one year ago, there is a 98% chance (about 49 in 50) that you are still in business.

So in the present climate, about 1 out of every 5 businesses that deliver a poor customer experience (where poor is less than 80% recommendation rate) fail, whereas only 1 out of 50 superior performers fail.

Said another way, superior service providers are 10x more likely to stay in business than poor performers.

It is worth noting that the national average among builders and remodelers is in the low 70% range, and the average among our members is in the low 90% range. Using these stats, the average non-Guildmember is at least 6x more likely to go out of business than our average Guildmember.

A friend and business owner recently provided me with this gem:

Back before I was certified as a master of business administration, I asked my dad exactly what “overhead” means in accounting terms. His response was: anyone who can NOT show up for work for a few days and NOT be missed is overhead.

And his father then added that he was the largest single source of overhead for his company.

A friend forwarded me an email that included these pictures.

Choosing a homebuilder or remodeler is a decision that normal people make only a few times in their lives. People have a lot of anxiety about making the right choice. They should! There’s lots of money involved, and they will literally live with the decision for years. This is one of the reasons why I regularly say that those working in the building and remodeling profession have one of the most important jobs in the world: They are shaping the lives of their customers.

Given the nature of our business (we may have surveyed more customers about their experience with their builder, remodeler, or contractor than anyone else out there), and the significance of this decision, I regularly receive requests for advice. Generally, people come to me for counsel after they’ve developed their short list of candidates, and my advice assumes you have already gotten to that point.

So what is the one supremely important thing you can do to qualify your prospective builder or remodeler, and help you determine if you’d like to become their next customer?

Understand what kind of experience their most recent customers have had, because your experience is likely to be similar. If you’re interviewing a Guildmember, they can provide you with a summary report of recent customer feedback.

If you’re considering someone who doesn’t use GuildQuality for customer satisfaction surveying, you still have a simple option, though it will take a little more effort on your part and theirs. (more…)

Echoing the sentiment expressed in GuildQuality’s most recent Member Predictions & Strategies Survey, the NAHB’s Housing Market Index (a measure of confidence among new single family home builders) rose for the second month in a row.

GuildQuality was pleased to power Remodeling’s first ever Big50 Service Excellence Award. I had the honor of announcing the award winners at Friday’s event.

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 are the 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.

Those four remodelers are:

Tim Lemke Construction, Mendota Heights, MN

Shawn Lober Construction, Danville, CA

Roberts Construction Group, Evanston, IL

Zimmerman Associates, Lakeland, FL

Congratulations to this year’s Big50 Service Excellence Award Winners, as well as the other 46 2009 Big50 Remodelers (including ten of our Guildmembers).

At last year’s Remodeling Leadership Conference, I took my own notes and then shared a summary. Times have changed since then.

This year, attendees used Twitter to record and share their thoughts. Most twitterers in attendance added #rmlc09 to their posts so they could all be tracked and organized into a single place (this is called “marking a post with a hashtag“).

You can see all the marked posts in reverse chronological order, by click here.

The big contributors were Leah Thayer, Lauren Hunter, and Michael Anschel — I came in a distant fourth. Several more (including Curb Appeal’s Robin Burrill) were contributing, but they didn’t include the hashtag, so their commentary isn’t captured in the summary.

Congratulations to the 10 Guildmembers that are among the 50 remodelers inducted into this year’s Remodeling Big50!

Guildmember (member since)

BACK Construction (2005)

Construction Ahead (2005)

Henderer Design + Build (2007)

Wood Wise Design & Remodeling (2007)

Amsted Construction (2008)

Atlanta Design & Build (2008)

Maggio Roofing (2008)

All County Exteriors (2009)

Big State Remodeling (2009)

Gruver Cooley Corporation (2009)

This morning, Remodeling announced the 2009 Big50:

For the 23rd consecutive year, we are pleased to announce the newest members of the Big50, an elite group of remodeling professionals whose exemplary business practices, management skills, community service, and craftsmanship distinguish them from their competitors and elevate the stature of the profession overall.

This year also brought the introduction of a new component to the Big50: The Service Excellence Award, powered by GuildQuality.

Most of our work revolves around customer satisfaction surveying. But we also enjoy the opportunity to celebrate and promote our community of quality to the general public. With that in mind, I thought I’d share some stats from the last 30 days:

The general public has visited 441 member profiles* at least once.

126 unique members have had traffic click through from their profile directly to their own website.

110 members have shared their Customer Report at least once.

* Some members choose not to publish their Qlist Profiles. Reasons to consider: It helps with SEO, it’s useful to prospective customers, and it lets folks know you’re part of our community of quality.

In late October of 2008, GuildQuality introduced “Listings”. With that release, members could post Examples of Work and Homes for Sale — complete with photos and maps — to their Qlist Profile.

So far, around 10% of our membership has created a listing and taken advantage of this functionality.

Some reasons why you should do this right now: 11 of the 20 most prominent Qlist Profiles have Listings, and two of the five most-viewed Qlist Profiles have Listings.

And here’s a more meaningful stat: In the last 30 days, each listing has been viewed an average of 10 times.

And if you put a little effort into your Qlist Profile, and become one of the top 25% most viewed profile pages, that 10/listing average climbs to 15 views each month!

The first listing is free, members can have up to three listings for $10 per month, and up to 10 listings is $20 per month.

Assuming you have three examples of your work listed with a handful of nice pictures, descriptions, etc, you’ll likely get about 30 views (or “clicks”) each month. That’s $0.33 per click. Assuming you put in 10 listings and that average holds, your cost per click drops to $0.10 each. And if you only want to put in one (just to test it out) then your cost per click is ZERO.

So if you haven’t created a Listing, what’s stopping you? Click here to log into your account and be taken directly to the Qlist management page. From there, simply click “Add a New Qlist Listing”, and you’re off to the races. It takes just a couple minutes and is very straightforward.

A number of people have asked for a little help with this, so here are instructions, straight from the source:

Once you’ve registered your company with Google Local, it is easy to add your listing to be seen either in your Qlist Profile or by the customers who have completed a GuildQuality survey.

Jerrod just let me know that Ross Marzarella of All County Exteriors is on the cover of the current issue of Replacement Contractor. That makes two Guildmembers that are the poster children of the industry right now.

From the article:

Obviously, equity has shrunk, but there are people out there pulling the trigger, notes Ross Marzarella, vice president of operations at All County Exteriors, in Lakewood, N.J., whose company, believing fortune favors the bold, doubled its advertising this year.

In October of 2008, we polled our members, requesting their forecast into what’s going to happen with their businesses and what will happen in the market in general. We also solicited comments about their strategies and thoughts on emerging and waning trends. Shortly after that survey, I published a brief summary of all of the feedback (the Q4 08 summary is available here).

In mid-March of 2009, we repeated the survey, and I was pleased with the results for two primary reasons: tons of participation and commentary, and much more optimism than the Q4 08 survey. Click here to download the complete report.

While there’s lots more commentary about strategy and trends in the download, below is a single chart that succinctly describes the change in sentiment.