GuildQuality

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 Pella Certified Contractor® GuildQuality Customer Satisfaction award.  The winners and their Pella distributor are:

• B.W. Construction, Chicago
• Penn Contractors, Philadelphia
• Premier Quality Windows & Siding, Chicago
• Energy Efficient Construction, Detroit
• Window Outfitters, Minneapolis
• Tudron Construction, Chicago
• Apex Remodeling & Construction, Chicago
• Rusco Window & Door, Chicago
• The Woodshop, Inc., Chicago
• Assurance Builders, Phoenix
• Swanson Installation, Chicago
• Professional Home Services, Chicago
• Normandy Builders, Chicago
• Boardwalk Builders, Inc., Washington, D.C.
• Schmidt Exteriors, Chicago

Each of the winners achieved a greater than 90% recommendation rate on recently-completed Pella jobs, and are active members of GuildQuality’s community of quality.

To view the press release, please visit Pella’s press room.

Yesterday, we published our Guildmembers near-term market predictions and strategies. You can view that summary in this blog post.

Today, we finished compiling the feedback we received from non-members. The sample size isn’t as large (while we consistently hear from more than 100 members in this quarterly survey, we generally have only about 50 to 80 non-members participate), but we hear great feedback that’s definitely worth sharing.

As in the Member Predictions Survey, we ask non-members to answer two primary questions:

“Relative to the previous six months, what kind of change do you expect in YOUR COMPANY’S PERFORMANCE over the next six months?”

“Relative to the previous six months, what kind of change do you expect in THE MARKET over the next six months?”

In this quarter, and in previous quarters, non-members and Guildmembers provided a similar forecast for the market as a whole. But when asked about their own business’ prospects for the next six months, non-members are a good bit more cautious (click here to see members’ forecast). With that said, the trend is definitely toward greater optimism among both members and non-members, and, as with our Guildmembers, non-members are more optimistic for their own businesses than for the market in general.

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3/24 Update: You may also be interested in this quarter’s summary of non-member feedback.

Since the fourth quarter of 2008, we’ve regularly surveyed our members, asking their opinions about the near term future for both their company and the the construction and real estate industry. (click here to view all past reports)

In each Member Predictions Survey, we ask our members to answer two primary questions:

“Relative to the previous six months, what kind of change do you expect in YOUR COMPANY’S PERFORMANCE over the next six months?”

“Relative to the previous six months, what kind of change do you expect in THE MARKET over the next six months?”

As in prior quarters, more than 100 of our members participated. This quarter’s feedback (provided between mid-March and yesterday) showed the most optimism since we began our “Guildmember Predictions” surveying. What follows are two ways of viewing their feedback, as well as all of the many comments provided by our homebuilders, remodelers, real estate developers, and contractors.

Guildmember Confidence Index (GCI)

The Guildmember Confidence Index boils all of the answers down to a single number. We calculate the GCI by subtracting the percentage of members predicting decline from the percentage predicting improvement. Therefore, a positive number means more members predict things will be getting better than worse. The only quarter in which the GCI has been negative (so far) has been Q4 2008.

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This afternoon, we crossed the 1,000 image threshold in our member’s listings. Case of Birmingham pulled us over that milestone when they fleshed out the examples of their award-winning work with dozens of beautiful pictures of their bathrooms, basements, and kitchens.

We saw a dramatic increase in members publishing examples of their work and homes for sale after we increased the number of complimentary listings that companies can publish from 1 to 10.

Check out the interview with Steve Kendrick of Structures Building Company (and other custom builders) in “As You Like It”, an article by Jenny Sullivan in the February issue of Builder Magazine. From the interview:

“We can’t build spec homes anymore because the banks just aren’t financing them,� says Kendrick, whose boutique outfit builds approximately 10 homes per year. “And while a lot of builders in the area have gone out of business, their superintendents have gone on to start their own companies, so the number of custom builders on the market hasn’t actually gone down. We just have new competitors now whose overhead is limited to a truck and home office, no workers’ comp or experience running a business, under-pricing homes. Instead of complaining about it, we’re looking for a new niche that, with luck, will allow us to stop doing bid work.�

With this goal in mind, Kendrick is on the cusp of launching HouseSimple, a build-on-your-lot program offering a library of luxury plans with preselected, pre-priced base packages, as well as upgrade options for lighting, fixtures, hardware, appliances, and exterior paint selections.

“A lot of people get scared off by the custom building process because the design meetings and selections are so time-consuming,� Kendrick observes. “The idea behind HouseSimple is to give buyers a blueprint as a starting point. From there, they can keep it simple with the finishes and schemes we’ve preselected, or they can fully customize. Or they can customize just one part of it, such as the lighting package. The overall idea is to simplify the process and make it less overwhelming for those who want something that looks and feels custom, but don’t have the time to pick every little detail.�

The entire interview includes strategies from a handful of other custom home builders, all of whom are successfully tackling the challenge of how to make the custom homebuilding process easier for the prospective client. Learn more about Charleston-area Structures Building Company’s HouseSimple program at their website.

A member asked this morning if it is possible to add their GuildQuality badge to their Facebook Fan Page. Using the “Static FBML” application, I was able to add ours to the GuildQuality Fan Page without any trouble.

The Static FBML application enables you to “add advanced functionality to your Page using the Facebook Static FBML application. This application will add a box to your Page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization.”

I have been able to get it to display in its own tab or within “Boxes,” but I haven’t been able to figure out how to get it to display on our “Wall” or sidebar. If anyone finds a better solution, please let me know.

Our friends at Custom Builders USA have offered to conduct a special webinar for GuildQuality members on May 11 from 1-2pm ET.   The speaker will be Bill Smithers (CEO), who will share how the CB/USA network combines the purchasing power of reputable builders to lower costs and increase service levels from suppliers.  CB/USA’s value proposition is well summarized in this short video (2.5 minutes).

We will be joined on the call by Bob Fleming, owner of Classic Remodeling.  Bob is a GuildQuality member and a founding member of CB/USA – Charleston. 

Click here to register for the webinar.

3/30 UPDATE – Breyer Construction became the first member to respond to questions on RemodelQA’s site.  Check out the GQ badge and link to their Customer Report.

I recently connected with an old friend, who has launched a website called RemodelQA.  The site is intended to connect homeowners, who have questions about remodeling or home improvement projects, with qualified professionals.  While still early days, the company has 39,000 indexed pages in Google.

The company was founded by experts in search engine optimization.  If you search “remodeling questions” in Google, RemodelQA is the second listing.  When you respond to a question and share your expertise, the response creates a unique internet page that exists forever and will be searchable by Google.   So, this is a way to market your expertise and create a permanent “flyer” for your business on the internet.  In some cases, it might also lead to a qualified lead.

RemodelQA is a free service, and they are marketing GuildQuality members on their site.  Click here to sign up, upload your company’s logo, add links to your social media, and become part of RemodelQA’s online Contractor Directory.  Finally, GuildQuality members will be noted with the GQ logo (see below) and you can insert a link to your Customer Report.

Please let us know your feedback as you try out this service.

In January, I previewed the new GuildQuality badges. And as of last night, they are ready for you to add them to your company’s website. Click here to get started.

A few great things about the new GQ badge:

1) It’s smart like a chameleon. If you publish your customer report, it instructs people to “view customer feedback” and links to the report. If you don’t publish the report, the badge instructs people to simply “view member profile”, and directs traffic to your profile page. Also, if you’re not a Guildmaster Award Winner when you add it, but you earn that recognition later, the badge automagically changes to reflect the accolade. And if you ever decide to cancel your membership, the image will mysteriously and unceremoniously disappear from your site.

2) People will recognize it. It’s designed to give a consistent representation of the GuildQuality brand across our entire membership.

3) It plays favorites. The badge communicates with the GQ system and rewards those that use it with higher ranking in our membership directory.

4) It can save you some money and earn you prizes. To celebrate the launch of the new badges, we’re giving a credit of $50 and a koozie to the first 10 members that add it to their site. So forward these instructions to whomever manages your website, and ask them to set you up!

3/15 Update: A bunch of members jumped right on this and added the GQ badge pretty quickly. Way to go! We hurdled the 10 member goal in two days. As of this morning, we’re at about 20.

If you are the customer of one of our members who publishes their customer report, then you’ll see this form right after you complete a survey by mail or email. This is also the form you see if you return to your survey response to view it at a later date (six percent of all respondents return to view their response — I suspect most of these are spouses, checking up on how their significant other responded).

We’ve added an “auto-share” option to this form — it helps your customers share your customer report via Facebook or Twitter. If the respondent clicks on Twitter, they go straight to their twitter account with the following pre-loaded “tweet”:

The bit.ly link in the tweet will take people to your customer report.

If the respondent clicks on the Facebook icon, they go straight into their FB account, and your customer report link is pre-loaded into their status box.

This option only appears if you publish your customer report. Our intention is to help your customers share their good experiences with their friends and family. If you don’t know if your customer report is published, search for your company in our member directory. If you’d like to edit your customer report settings, click here.

You can now add your company’s YouTube channel to your member profile (and Vimeo, too). Click here to make that happen.

With just one click, you can now publish the comments you receive in your survey responses directly to your Customer Report. Those newly published comments will also appear in the GuildQuality Stream. Watch this 90 second video to see how its done!

GuildQuality was a finalist for the Rackspace FANATI Award for exceptional customer service. Alas, we didn’t bring home the gold. That honor went to PetRelocation.com. Their video is worth a watch:

These guys love what they do. If ever we need to move our pets, I’m definitely calling them.

May 25 Update: We just upped the limit even further to 25.

Your member profile allows you to publish pictures and descriptions of your work, communities, and homes for sale. We call these “listings”. Previously, we’ve allowed every member to publish one listing for free, and we’ve charged extra for more than 1.

Today, we raised the “free” limit to 10 25 listings.

So if you haven’t created a bunch of Listings, 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.

You’ll notice that our members with listings generally appear higher in the default sort order of the member directory. Amount of content is one of the things that determines the ranking of member profiles. The other two are recency of surveying and whether or not the member uses the GuildQuality badge.

The American College of the Building Arts is dedicated to educating the next generation of building artisans. Students at the college are learning both the craft and the profession of construction.

Visit the college’s site or read this recent Preservation Magazine article, and you’ll quickly see why we’d like to support their mission. In our own ways, we both seek to elevate the stature of the building, remodeling, and real estate development profession.

The college and its students would appreciate your financial support — and they’d also benefit from some inspiration. So here’s my appeal to you:

Please tell us why you have chosen this profession!

If 100 building, remodeling, or real estate development professionals share their story (in the comments here on this post, by replying to @guildquality on twitter, or on our facebook page) before the end of March by midnight on April 1 (OK, so we’ve eliminated the deadline. Just comment already!), we’ll give $500 to the college. So please, give us your answer (no matter how brief), and ask others to do the same.

Note: I’ve reposted some comments that people have provided in other forums. I’ve tried to catch them all, but likely missed some. My apologies if I missed yours!