GuildQuality

I take a lot of inspiration from the company 37signals. Their main product is a collaboration software called Basecamp (which we’ve used here at GuildQuality since late 2005). In addition to building great software, the 37signals team prolifically shares how they do things on the their blog, and the two principals have consolidated a bunch of their best posts into an exceptional business book called Rework.

It’s safe to say that a big part of their marketing is their sharing. They share how they do things, and people buy from them often because they’re as impressed with why they do what they do as what their software actually does.

A few months ago, 37signals launched their own internal tool to monitor happiness with support requests. They call it Smiley. For the first few months, Smiley was visible to the internal team only. Fried shares how it helps them improve, and how they’re taking it to the next level:

Smiley has had a tremendous positive impact on our overall customer service. We’ve learned a lot about what it takes to make a customer happy. And our customers are happier as a result. As it goes, if you want to improve something, measure it….Inside 37signals, everyone can see our customer service ratings. We have a dashboard that shows how we’re doing. It’s great. I look at the page a dozen times a day to see how we’re doing. When I pitch in on support I’m very conscious of my ratings. Knowing how you’re doing helps you do better….However, we want to go even further. We want to be held to even higher standards of excellence when it comes to our customer service. So we’ve decided to expose our customer service ratings to the world.

Check out the 37signals Smiley score here. Very cool. As our Guildmembers know, we’ve been enabling them to do something similar with their customer feedback since way back in 2005 (here’s our feedback from our members about our service).

We’re hearing a lot about transparency these days — it seems to be the new new thing. The 37signals move with Smiley is one more sign that transparency is here to stay.

Two big wins come from publicizing your customer feedback: heightened team accountability and heightened customer trust.

With your customers’ feedback out their in the wild, your team takes their job that much more seriously and your customers know that you do as well. Happy customers pay obvious dividends. And publicizing performance — warts and all — takes it to a whole new level. People see what kind of experience they can expect to have if they work with you, they see that you consider it a fundamentally important metric, they see that you care about all these great people who buy something from you, and, most importantly, they see that you’re going to care about them too.

Our Customer Report has been around for eons, and we’ve updated and expanded it from time to time. Hold tight, as we’re polishing off its biggest overhaul right now. I look forward to sharing it with you shortly.

P.S. If you feel like you’ve overdosed on business books, and want a fresh perspective, read Rework, by the owners of 37signals. For some extra incentive, check out this month’s Inc. Magazine — company founder Jason Fried is on the cover with the headline, “How to get good at making money.”

Professional Remodeler’s cover story this month focuses on three great remodelers and how they use GuildQuality’s customer satisfaction surveying to deliver consistently exceptional customer experiences.

Some excerpts from the article:

From David Roberts, Roberts Construction Group (Evanston, IL):

While the vast majority of feedback is positive, any criticism is simply a chance for improvement, Roberts says. “Instead of me as a business owner telling some carpenter or manager [what went wrong]… it has a lot more clarity and weight coming from the person who’s house they were just working at. That employee will hear it loud and clear. That’s a great way to modify the behavior of an employee.”

From Linda Minde, Tri-Lite Builders (Chandler, AZ):

Most clients are surprised when they get to see a report of survey results, especially from a third party like GuildQuality, Minde says. “They don’t see it a lot. It gives validity, because they know that I’m not going to be changing things or embellishing things.”

Jonas Carnemark, Carnemark (Bethesda, MD):

Third-party ratings and comments are becoming increasingly important, especially to younger clients. They’re used to reading reviews before making any decision, whether it’s a restaurant rating on Yelp or reviews of a book on Amazon, Carnemark says. The ratings from GuildQuality simply provide another tool for the company’s marketing efforts, and a way to let clients know Carnemark has a good track record. “It adds that touch of security that other people have vouched for this company,” he says.

Update: In addition to sharing space in this article, I was just reminded that these exceptional companies share another common trait: all are members of Remodelers Advantage University.

In this great/brief video, GuildQuality member Ridley Wills of The Wills Company shares why he is a member of Remodelers Advantage Roundtables.