GuildQuality

Qualified Remodeler, in partnership with RenovationExperts, published its annual review of customer satisfaction trends from among clients who found their remodeler via the RenovationExperts website. In general, customer satisfaction is up relative to last year’s study. Ken Betz covered the study and also shared a bunch of my comments on some of the trends they saw. Among them:

I think people are more demanding, but I also believe the profession as a whole is rising to the occasion with more professionalism. To say it another way, I think it’s much harder for bad companies to stay in business today than it was five years ago.

Mark Newman of Remodeling just published an excellent piece describing some best practices from nine winners of Remodeling and Replacement’s Service Excellence Award (powered by GuildQuality).

Congratulations to GuildQuality member, Seabrook Land Company.  They were awarded a Gold Nugget Award for Residential Project of the Year at last month’s PCBC event in San Francisco.  Entries came from 14 Western states.

From the PCBC website – the awards “recognize those who improve our communities through exceptional concepts in design, planning and development.  The Gold Nugget Awards honor creative achievements in architectural design and land use planning for residential, commercial and industrial projects.”

To view the full list of winners, click here.  Seabrook won awards in multiple categories, including the “Ultimate Beach House” pictured here.

Early last year, we introduced a standardized GuildQuality badge for members to use on their websites. Over the last few months, we’ve been tweaking the badge design to make it more usable, flexible, and attractive when presented on a wide variety of websites. As of today, the new badges are available for your use.

We’ve abandoned the wide format in favor of a circular format that also has a transparent background and a white image outline. This makes it legible regardless of your website’s background color. We’ve also made it easy for you to choose between a larger size (100×100) or a smaller size (65×65) — the images shown here are 100×100.

As with our original badges, there are a few great reasons to use the GuildQuality badge (and the code we provide along with it):

1) It’s smart like a chameleon. It links directly to your member profile page and your customer feedback. 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.

So how do you get started? To add the GuildQuality badge to your website, or to download larger high-rez version for use in print, visit the Logos tab in the Marketing section of your account.

If html frightens you, forward this blog post to your website’s caretaker, and he or she can make it happen in five minutes (they’ll need to be a GQ “admin” user; “normal” users can’t access the marketing section of your account).

What about the old badge? For those who are using the old GuildQuality badge, it’s still live and functioning. Keep using it if you like, or grab the new code from within your account to update your website with the new image.

What are some other ways you can incorporate GuildQuality into your marketing? Check out this post for some additional resources.

We’ve recently formed a relationship with the National Association of Professionally Accredited Contractors.  NAPAC is a remodeling and home improvement industry association providing contractors with compliance tools, legal and operational seminars, expert white papers, best practices guides, and developing news.

We met NAPAC’s executive team back in February at the Replacement Contractor conference in San Antonio, and we find their mission to be well aligned with GuildQuality’s — “to elevate the stature of the building profession to a level commensurate with its importance.”

By joining NAPAC, GuildQuality members receive 24/7 access to a growing database of information available at www.napac.net. On the site, you can purchase legal documents such as customer contracts (backed by a $50,000.00 guarantee), independent contractor agreements, and customer payment demand letters.  Members also receive the NAPAC Report, which provides industry news.

GuildQuality members save $100 off the purchase price of your first annual NAPAC membership by using coupon code GUILD100 where indicated in your shopping cart.

Click here to learn more and join NAPAC.