GuildQuality

I thought our members would be interested in the extreme renovation/expansion my brother Vince recently completed on Sullivan’s Island, SC. Mugdock Castle is, in his words, “just your typical, everyday beach castle.”

If a Scottish explorer had discovered the semi-tropical paradise of the South Carolina Low Country in the 12th century, Mugdock Castle would be the type of fortified home he would have built there…Together with Forts Sumter and Moultrie, Mugdock Castle guards the entrance to Charleston Harbor – the most historic North American port of the Atlantic Coast.

Check out the pictures, and if they don’t satisfy your interest, you can rent the castle for a beach vacation. And if you need a Scottish mason to build a turret or a Charlestonian blacksmith to forge a dragon-headed handrail, you’ll find some qualified artisans on the Mugdock team page.

The title of this post is from a quote by E. W. Grove, builder of the Grove Park Inn, and is inscribed on a board next to the fireplace in Mugdock’s Winter Hall.

The results are in! More than 140 GuildQuality members participated in this quarter’s market predictions survey. The short answer: Most people are optimistic. For a more complete summary, check out the full report.

To view in full screen (highly recommended), click on “menu”  in the lower left-hand corner and “view full screen” below.

To read prior quarters’ summaries, click here.

The BBB has played a big role in the building business for many decades. Thousands of builders and remodelers have invested heavily in marketing their BBB accreditation. At least one of our Guildmembers has used GuildQuality feedback as part of their successful BBB Torch Award application. Conversely, some of our Guildmembers have disputed a low BBB rating as inaccurate or unrepresentative, and used our survey feedback to support their claim.

Has anyone had a similar experience to the small (and big!) businesses who are featured in this 20/20 segment? Have you suffered under a low score, only to be elevated to an A-rating after purchasing your accreditation? Has the opposite happened, wherein your score dropped when you refused to buy?

daily5Remodel is seeking your snapshots:

What’s the goal of Snapshots? To let remodeling pros peek inside the windows of their peers — and thus see some of the unique and wonderful things their peers are doing (other than performing high-quality remodeling work). It’s one thing when a third party writes about such an event or activity; it’s another when the remodeler shares the thinking behind a community service program, a marketing campaign, a team-building practice or an affirming PR coup.

Now it’s your turn. In celebration of the holidays, we invite you to share a Snapshot from your company.

d5R Readers will be voting on their favorite snapshots, and winners will receive special gift packs from Remodelers Advantage, Train2Build, and Construction Programs & Results. Submit your Snapshot to snapshots@daily5Remodel. The competition ends next week.

For the third straight calendar year, GuildQuality will serve as the preferred provider of customer satisfaction surveying for the Pella Certified Contractor (PCC) program.  Since launching the relationship in early 2009, we have signed up over 75 PCCs in 18 states and have achieved a 74% response rate across all surveys.  Click here for a list of PCCs with active profiles.

Jim Kabel, of Case Handyman & Remodeling of San Jose recently summarized his experience with GuildQuality:

“GuildQuality has enabled our company to capture, reinforce, and recognize quality in and across our team. It enables us to keep a strong, healthy balance between quality and profitability by putting quality in a very measurable position with quantitative data. It is the single best short-term measure of our success in satisfying our clients on a daily basis. I consider it integral to our business.”

So, what’s new for PCCs from GuildQuality in 2011?  Two webinars are already scheduled: one focused on best practices in surveying and another focused on leveraging social media.  And, for those who have not yet done so, we offer PCCs a 20 survey trial of our service!

Congratulations to Thompson Creek Window Company for being recognized as Replacement Contractor Magazine’s Contractor of the Year.

In describing their outdoor event-based marketing, Jim Cory writes, “what’s unique isn’t the concept so much as the discipline to execute it successfully.” From our perspective, that discipline permeates every division of the company.

On the second page of Jim Cory’s interview with the key members of the Thompson Creek team, Rick gives a kind nod to GuildQuality’s role in helping them excel:

GuildQuality…has upped customer satisfaction survey return rates from 30% to nearly 80% and yielded a ton of data about potential weak points in Thompson Creek’s various overlapping systems.

Read all of Jim Cory’s article in Replacement Contractor Magazine.

We were reminded this morning of the value of surveying during the course of projects, not just at completion.  Bob Fleming of Classic Remodeling completed a survey about GuildQuality’s performance and commented:

“The interim surveys are the greatest tool because clients will let you know what you need to do before it’s too late. It’s often as easy as finding that a dust barrier wasn’t properly installed, or they would prefer email updates every Monday morning. Once they see that you respond to their concerns, the stress just disappears and they become loyal clients for life.”

The key phrase here is “before it’s too late.”  Checking in during the project enables you to correct mistakes, adjust communications, and adapt to the client’s style.  You may think you know, but your clients will always share the truth with a third party.

If you’d like more information about our Mid-Way Through completion survey, please contact us at support@guildquality.com.

If you are a member of the GuildQuality LinkedIn Discussion Group, please chime in with your thoughts on our public website. I shared a couple revision concepts and am asking for member feedback.

If you’re a GuildQuality member, but not yet a member of our discussion group, you’ll have to request admission to the group before you can comment (we keep the group limited to members, employees, and very close “friends of GuildQuality”).

THANKS to all those who have shared their thoughts so far. I’m grateful for the feedback.

A couple Friday’s ago, inspired by a Q&A series started on Twitter by Sir Ken Robinson, I solicited questions from GuildQuality’s twitter followers.

A few minutes later, we received our first question, from Mosaic Group in Atlanta.

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As we’ve been doing with the remodeling industry’s Big50 at the Remodeling Leadership Conference for the last two years, GuildQuality will power a Service Excellence Award for replacement contractors, with five exceptional contractors to be recognized at this year’s Replacement Contractor Executive Conference in San Antonio on February 10.

Important: You need to register for the conference in order to be considered for the Service Excellence Award.

If you register before December 15, you’ll be eligible. When registering, check the box that opts you in to be considered for the award, and we’ll follow up to provide you with the details. I hope to see you in San Antonio!

P.S. Click here to download a PDF with more details about the event.

This is your chance to simultaneously promote your membership in our community of quality and keep your beverage icy cold!

We’re sending 5 koozies (while supplies last) to each Guildmember who does any of the following by 5pm midnight EST this Friday (tomorrow):

1) Publish at least five pictures of your work and add at least one tag to each picture;

2) Activate your GuildQuality Facebook or Twitter integration and post at least one customer comment to either your Facebook Page or Twitter stream; or

3) Add the GQ Badge to your Website.

Don’t miss out on your chance to win this vintage GuildQuality collector’s item from 2006!

I am pleased to announce the call for entries for the 2011 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 15, 2011, and we will announce all the winners on or about May 1, 2011.

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. I urge you to read the complete details here.

The application page for the 2011 Guildmaster Awards is in the Marketing section of your account. Click here to apply.

In our Newsletter from September, you’ll find ways to integrate GuildQuality to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, why we switched the recommendation question in surveys from yes/ no to zero to four, our Q3 Member Prediction Report, and more.

Subscribe to our newsletter here.

For the last half-dozen years, we’ve used an email marketing software for all of our mass emailing. While the GuildQuality application handles our email surveying and system notifications, an Australian company called CampaignMonitor helps us with all the other stuff.

If we’re sending a notification to all of our members about how to use a new feature, CampaignMonitor powers it. If we’re notifying all of our Dallas prospects that we’ll be in town in a few weeks, CampaignMonitor powers that message. And this morning, CampaignMonitor sent out our latest member newsletter.

Here is the dashboard report for the newsletter’s first hour out in the wild.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Pretty much any email marketing software will do a few of basic things for you:

1) Enable you to send good looking emails to lots of people;

2) Manage your recipient list, allow people to subscribe, allow people to unsubscribe, and keep you from sending emails to folks who’ve unsubscribed; and

3) Track who opens the email, who clicks on links, and on which links people click.

A good email marketing software will do all this with style. CampaignMonitor’s reporting is exceptional. We’re contemplating a big overhaul of GuildQuality’s own customer satisfaction performance reporting for our builders, remodelers, and developers, and CampaignMonitor is one of the web applications we look to for inspiration.

Here are a couple more screen shots to give you an idea of the thought and polish that goes into their reporting, and the value one can get from a great looking report: (more…)

Mark spotted this sign from long-time member Weidmann Remodeling in Buckhead this morning. Most of our member sign sightings are in the Intown Atlanta area (because that’s where we live!), but we occasionally spot others on our travels. Check them all out here.