GuildQuality

I am pleased to announce the call for entries for the 2010 Guildmaster Awards. The Guildmaster Awards recognize exemplary customer service among our membership of quality-minded builders, remodelers, developers, and contractors.

The call for entries will close on January 1, 2010, and we will announce all the winners on or about May 1, 2010. Awareness of the Guildmaster Awards continues to grow, as does consumer interest in our Guildmembers in general, and we intend to capitalize on that interest by promoting the award and the winners.

As in prior years, members who survey all of their customers (see the detailed qualifications for allowed exceptions), achieve a recommendation rate of greater than 90%, and have a high survey response rate will qualify to win an award. But there are some important changes to this year’s review process and qualifications. I urge you to read the complete details here. Below is a summary of the the two most important changes.

Public Review Period. This is perhaps the most significant change to our review process. In past year’s, we’ve relied upon the member to provide a complete and unabridged customer list for surveying. This year, we will continue to rely heavily on the “honor code”, but we are buttressing that policy with a public review period for each of the applicants. For 120 days from the time a member applies, their member profile will reference that they are 2010 Guildmaster Award candidate, and consumers will be able to comment on the application.

Response Rate Requirement. Recognizing that many of our members with a large customer volume are unable to receive a response rate of 70% or greater, we’ve lowered the required response rate for members with a large survey volume. The minimum survey response rate for smaller members is still 70%, and as the company’s survey volume increases, the required response rate drops to 50%. Read more in the qualification details.

The application page for the 2010 Guildmaster Awards is in the Marketing section of your account. Click here to apply.

Click here to see our most recent member newsletter, or subscribe to the newsletter by clicking on the little envelope at the bottom of this page.

Please join us this Thursday, September 24 at 2pm EST, for a presentation by Jon Fogg of The Berke Group.

Webinar Topic: “Beyond Survival… on to Recovery”

Click to register.

We have run out of adjectives to describe the last couple of years in our industry.  Most of us have necessarily adopted a “survival” mode, and because of this are still in business.  However, there are signs that we are poised for recovery.  What will the recovery look like? What should we be doing right now to compete?  How will we maximize revenue and margin as the economy and the housing sector begin to recover? Jon Fogg from the Berke Group will discuss these topics in our upcoming Webinar on September 24 at 2pm EST.

About Jon Fogg:

Jon is a seasoned business strategist and executive with more than 30 years of new home sales experience and sales management experience. Prior to joining the Berke Group in 2006, Jon led the sales organization of one of the country’s largest home builders. He has weathered 9 housing cycles and has some interesting insights on steps companies should be taking right now to position themselves to best take advantage of the next stage of the housing cycle. The Berke Group is a management consulting firm that helps CEOs and sales leadership teams maximize their revenues and get the most from their sales organizations.

Click here to register for the webinar.

UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 30 — We’ve finished compiling the full report (Thanks for your help, Michael!). Click here to view and/or download it.

In our survey from last week, more than 100 Guildmembers offered their predictions for their and the market’s performance in the near term. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which members have offered us their predictions.

Once we finish compiling all the commentary, we’ll publish a complete summary report. [UPDATE: The full report is now available here.] Until then, here are the highlights:

While fewer people (4%) predict the market will worsen than at any time in the past year, a dramatically larger percentage (64%) believe we’ve made all of our gains and predict that the next six months will be about the same as things are presently.

Also of note, the “Guildmember Confidence Index” declined for the first time since we began tracking it a year ago. While not as high as last quarter, anything above zero means that, on the whole, members expect improvement. While they continue to forecast improvement, they foresee less improvement in the near term than when they were asked the same question in prior quarters.

We’ll wait a few more days to give everyone an opportunity to reply to the survey, and then we’ll compile the feedback into a single document. You can read more about past Guildmember Confidence Reports by clicking here.

In the most recent Remodeling Magazine, Victoria Downing penned a tight article on why many remodelers (and custom builders or developers) rely on customer satisfaction surveying to deliver a great customer experience, how they use it in their day to day operations, and how it can help them to drive up referrals.

Longtime member Trace Ventures enjoyed the spotlight in this article. On a related note, Trace Ventures was profiled by HGTVpro in 2008 for their innovative employee compensation strategy that weaves customer satisfaction and gross profit into the bonus plan.

In July, we launched a new service focused on surveying our member’s sales prospects, typically after the initial appointment. The response from our members was positive and prospect surveying accounted for 14% of our total survey volumes last month.

We’re hearing that close ratios are improving, as members listen to their prospects and better understand how they are performing in sales situations. The prospect survey also sets the stage for future GuildQuality surveying, and reinforces that you care about feedback.

If you are interested in learning more, contact us.

In an effort to expand our consumer-facing resources, we recently launched a new public website that brings our members to the forefront.

Ever since the launch of GuildQuality’s first surveying and reporting system in September 2003, we’ve provided a world class service to the businesses that shape our built environment, helping them to improve the quality of their work and deliver an exceptional customer experience.

After a few years of effort, we attracted the interest of consumers looking to either find great companies or gain affirmation that a company they were considering was worthy of their patronage. With that emerging interest, we developed the GuildQuality Qlist in late 2006 — a directory of our members that includes some important information about their work.

Since then, consumer interest in our membership has continued to grow, and today, visitors to our public website are more likely to be consumers than builders, remodelers, or real estate professionals. Similarly, our new members are now as likely to survey with GuildQuality so that they can articulate their quality to prospective customers as they are to gain insight into how they can deliver better service.

With that in mind, we made two major changes to the GuildQuality public website:

1) We brought our members to the forefront of the site. The old homepage talked about our service as it relates to prospective Guildmembers. The new site describes our membership, who they are, and why they’re a part of our community of quality. The new message is broader and meant to send two related messages to two related audiences: “If you are a consumer, you may be interested in these companies”; and “If you are a quality-minded builder, remodeler, or real estate company, you may be interested in learning more about GuildQuality.”

2) We enhanced the way we present member profiles so that they offer more information to consumers in a better organized format. Using our own profile page as an example, you’ll see that the updated profile pages opens in a new window, within which are both the company descriptions and the customer reports (if your customer report is not activated, and you’d like to add it to your profile, visit the marketing section of your account). Additionally, the new pages lack all the surrounding GuildQuality website navigation, so if you’ve had reservations about linking to your profile from your website (for fear that visitors would start nosing around GuildQuality rather than your own site), you can now rest easy.

So what’s next for GuildQuality’s consumer push? We have some changes coming to the 2010 Guildmaster Awards, and look forward to sharing those soon.

As an aside, David did a great job with this project, but any typos or content mistakes are my fault and I’d greatly appreciate you pointing them out to me.