Quality-minded builders, remodelers, developers and contractors rely on our customer satisfaction surveying to help them provide exceptional service

On Friday, Rackspace informed us that, after becoming an award finalist earlier this year, we did not become the supreme super winner of their coveted FANATI Award. Rackspace has not yet announced the winner, and I hope to have the opportunity to congratulate them when they do.

I understand that Rackspace based their decision on two things:

1) Each candidate’s application video, and

2) The company’s customer satisfaction scores (compiled via Rackspace’s own survey).

Rackspace asked that a random 300 of our members be surveyed. 127 of you graciously responded (even though most of you had already responded to one of GQ’s own member satisfaction surveys).

On Friday, Rackspace shared with us a summary of the survey feedback you provided, and I’m exceedingly pleased to report that we did pretty well. In fact, the Rackspace survey showed us with a Net Promoter Score of a whopping 83.2%. That’s higher than the scores for top performing industry giants like Apple and USAA. It’s also higher than our similarly calculated GuildQuality Index (GQI) of 69% (YTD).

If you are interested in the Net Promoter methodology, you may want to read this brief post from late 2007, or check our Fred Reichheld’s book, The Ultimate Question.

An interview with Kelly Rulis, Vice President of Customer Satisfaction & Experience for John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods:

Click here to learn more about GuildQuality and our services for homebuilders, remodelers, contractors, and real estate developers.

For a number of years, GuildQuality has allowed our members to opt-in to our public membership directory. We’re interested in sharing with the world which companies rely on GuildQuality to help them deliver an exceptional customer experience. We believe their membership in our community of quality speaks well of them, and it’s certainly a feather in our cap to be the tie that binds so many exceptional businesses together.

But after a while, a simple list starts to get old. So earlier this week, we introduced the GuildQuality Stream — a feed of all of our members’ published activity. For those Guildmembers who have a public profile, we’re publishing their updates. Those updates include their twitter and blog posts, as well as updates to their GuildQuality listings. And if they’ve published their customer feedback, the updates will include survey response notifications and flagged customer comments.

The result is a stream of interesting activity, updated every hour on the hour. You can view what’s going on all over North America, or zoom all the way in, and look at Charleston only.

While I may be biased, I find it mesmerizing. I am unable to keep from returning to check it out at 2 minutes after each hour.

A couple weeks ago, we applied for the Rackspace Fanati Award:

Here at Rackspace, we’ve built a reputation based on service, known to our customers as Fanatical Support®; our anytime, anywhere, any way approach to customer service. And we know we’re not the only ones who put customer needs first. That’s why we created The FANATI in 2007 to recognize one of our customers for valuing customer service as much as we do.

I was thrilled to hear that GuildQuality is among a handful of finalists. To determine the winner, Rackspace is presently surveying a random selection of our members (the irony!), as well as a selection of customers from the other finalists.

Rackspace is one of the companies we emulate for our own customer service, and being a finalist for this award is a big coup for our team.

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-December and this morning) 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 additional 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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On December 3, GuildQuality hosted a webinar to review some of our marketing resources. Here is the recorded video. (33 minutes)

This webinar is for builders, remodelers, and developers who’d like to learn how to take advantage of our marketing resources and for those who need a refresher on the subject. We have a number of tools that help our members enhance their online presence and better articulate their quality of service for prospective customers.

In addition to reviewing our complimentary marketing services (like Customer Reports, Member Profiles, Listings, and our integration with a number of social media services), we also discuss prospect surveying.

Each year, Rackspace sponsors a customer service competition. The “Fanati” award is designed to recognized “fanatical” service among the company’s customers. This year’s application required that candidates submit a 5 minute video about their company.

In our video application, you’ll hear three Atlanta-area members describe why they use GuildQuality, what we do for them, and what kind of people make up our team.

Special thanks to Dwayne Hill at Traton Homes, Kelly Rulis at John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods, Dan Weidmann of Weidmann Remodeling, and Alan Stump (the video’s producer).

In our Newsletter from November, you’ll find an article on best practices, a webinar invitation, member news, and an invite to beta test a new GuildQuality service.

On November 20, 2000, I incorporated GuildQuality. It was a couple more years before I made the business my full time occupation, and it wasn’t until August of 2003 that GuildQuality’s surveying and reporting system first launched. A lot has changed since that fateful day in 2000. I got a dog, a wife (who came with another dog), a great group of employees, then a son, a daughter, and, along the way, hundreds of fantastic customers. Thanks to all of you for helping me realize what was, nine years ago, barely more than a vague idea. Today, our community of quality includes hundreds of the most quality-minded building, remodeling, and real estate professionals working today. Together they, along with our tremendous employees and supportive partners, are pushing GuildQuality and our mission forward. Together we are elevating the stature of our profession to a level commensurate with its importance.

Earlier this month, Professional Remodeler published their 5 market leaders from each of the 20 major markets in the United States. Of the 100 companies recognized by ProRemodeler, 21 are GuildQuality Guildmembers.

I’m a firm believer that bigger is not necessarily better. One of my favorite Guildmembers limits his capacity to no more than 7 custom homes per year. Nevertheless, size is a meaningful indicator. In today’s world, it is difficult to grow and sustain a large service business without running a professional operation — and it is especially difficult to do so without also delivering a great customer experience.

I’m grateful that so many of these accomplished businesses allow us to be a part of their strategy for success, and we’re proud of the work we do for them.

I am scheduled to give several talks at industry events in the next couple weeks:

Breakfast with Remodelers Advantage at the Indianapolis Remodeling Show

Thursday, October 29, 7:00am, Indianapolis Convention Center

Victoria Downing and I will be giving short sales presentations about GuildQuality and Remodelers Advantage Roundtables. These sales presentations are specifically for owners of remodeling or custom building companies with greater than $1 million in annual sales.

While the event is designed for companies that have not yet joined either GuildQuality or Remodelers Advantage Roundtables, we absolutely welcome our existing members, the press, and our wonderful partners. Let us know if you’d like to be added to the registration list. Once we hear from you, we’ll forward you the room location.

Bucks-Mont NARI Education Day

Thursday, November 5, All Day, Perkasie, PA

The good people at Bucks-Mont NARI (near Philadelphia) have invited me to be the afternoon keynote speaker at their annual education day. I’ll be giving a presentation on the “Past, Present, and Future of the Remodeling Business.” The talk focuses on the evolution of the industry — particularly its professionalism, regulations, technology, and the marketing strategies of those that are leading it. I’ll also make some predictions for the near future based on the trends we see emerging among consumers and our members.

The morning of the event, I’ll be leading a workshop entitled “Thriving in the New Reputation Economy.” In it, we’ll explore the intersection of customer service and social media.

Click here to register for Education Day.

Custom Builder Symposium

Saturday, November 7 & Sunday, November 8, San Diego

I’m giving a talk (on Saturday) and leading a workshop (on Sunday) on social media and customer service. In the talk, I’ll explore some of the best practices of people within and outside the industry. The workshop that follows will be hands-on — people will leave the session with a Twitter account (and at least 1 follower!), and an understanding of how they can leverage social media and consumer review sites to deepen their connections with customers and prospects. Click here for more information about this year’s Custom Builder Symposium.

This morning, the WSJ published an article entitled On The Internet, Everyone’s A Critic, But They’re Not Very Critical. The essence of the article: “when consumers write online reviews, they tend to leave positive ratings: The average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five.” This article echos a recent YouTube question from their blog: “if the majority of videos are getting five stars, how useful is this system really?”

Visit Yelp, Kudzu, or Google Local and you’ll see this for yourself. Certainly not all experiences are 4.3 stars out of five, so where are all the unhappy folks? The truth is that, despite what you might guess, it is the moderately UNhappy people who are least likely to express an opinion. These are the normal and polite people who, having nothing nice to say, choose to remain silent.

When I started GuildQuality, I assumed the opposite would be true — that unhappy people would be more eager to give feedback. In actuality, when we survey on behalf of the builder, remodeler, or real estate developer, we observe that the best companies have both a high recommendation rate and a high response rate.

An obvious red flag for a business is a low recommendation rate, but another subtler warning sign is a low response rate. That means that your customers no longer care about your company.

This is why internet based ratings are so high — the relatively small percentage of people that provided them are generally passionate about the experience they received. They care so much that they pulled up their browser and published some of their feedback for the benefit of the entire world. If their review is negative, they are likely to be so extremely unhappy that they have become vindictive. This is a tiny minority of customers — even among mediocre businesses. But the majority of internet-based reviews are from people who are ecstatic about their experience — so much so that they will “do the company a favor” by giving some feedback. But most people simply express their opinion with silence: They don’t care enough to make the effort.

This latter group — the silent majority — fills in the void and gives you an accurate picture. These are people like you and me, and the kind of experience they had (but didn’t rate on Google Local) is the kind that all customers are most likely to have.

As the CEO of Yelp said in the WSJ article, “A broader range of opinions can give consumers a more complete view of a business.”

Whether you are a business looking to understand how you are doing, or a consumer deciding whether or not to patronize a business, the most reliable performance report will describe the experience had by all consumers — not just those that provide online ratings. That requires a high rate of participation in a survey of a significant group that is representative of all customers.

At GuildQuality, we try to keep it simple: We encourage every Guildmember to survey every customer, and we have a high response rate to our surveying. That maximizes the value and utility of the member’s survey feedback and performance reporting. And if they choose to publish their performance summaries, then that gives consumers something much more meaningful than a simple 5-star rating.

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.

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.