GuildQuality

We have a couple tiny tweaks to make to our new GuildQuality overview video, but I couldn’t wait any longer and had to get it out there in the wild. Many thanks to Daniel at Friendly Human for the excellent production!

Another video from our team, this time from Laura Summerlin, our director of member services. People join GuildQuality expecting to receive real-time customer feedback and powerful performance reporting. But what surprises new members the most about GuildQuality? It’s all the additional things they can do with their membership.

Last week, the excellent folks at Friendly Human visited GQHQ and filmed our team sharing their thoughts about GuildQuality. We’ll soon have a great new video that helps Guildmembers understand what we’re all about and who we are. Last night, they forwarded me one of the snippets that’s going into the final product.

Herein, Jerrod shares the major reasons why companies that care about their clients and the quality of service they provide sign up for GuildQuality’s trial.

Late this evening, we’ll update our member profile pages with a new design. A significant part of this redesign involves the introduction of GuildQuality Reviews. Once our redesign goes live, your customers will be able to provide a public review of your company along with their survey response.

We’ve been piloting GuildQuality reviews with our own member surveying since late November, and in the last couple weeks we expanded our pilot program to include about 50 Guildmembers. From the surveying we’ve done with our Guildmembers during this pilot period, we’ve found that, when asked, roughly a third of survey respondents provide a review along with their survey response.

Why are we introducing GuildQuality Reviews? There are a number of reasons we’re introducing reviews. The main reason is that, for the members who want to leverage their customer feedback to strengthen their brand, our survey process presents a great opportunity to let customers share more (and more useful information) than they’re presently able to. Their published comments are already finding their way into consumer rating services like Google Places, and with the addition of GuildQuality Reviews, more robust, useful, informative commentary will make its way throughout the web.

(more…)

Earlier this month, we sponsored the inaugural Replacement Contractor Service Excellence Award, which was given out at the Replacement Contractor Executive Conference held in San Antonio, Texas.

Conference registrants were invited to participate in the award.  For those who opted in, we asked each company to provide their full client list from 2010.  We then surveyed a representative sample of their clients using our e-mail, telephone, and mail surveying process.  The survey questions covered the full experience in working with the contractor, spanning the sales and service experience, quality of workmanship and products used, and (ultimately) would they recommend the contractor to a friend.

The participants were evaluated across all questions surveyed, with particular weight given to the response rate and recommendation rate. Working collaboratively with the editors at Hanley Wood, we then selected three winners from two different categories – those with more than $10 million or more in revenue for 2010, and those with under $10 million in revenue for 2010.  We were pleased to announce the winners alongside our partners, Hanley Wood and James Hardie.

It is worthy of noting that all of the participants posted high scores, averaging a 73% response rate and a 93% recommendation rate.

The full list of all six winners are listed below:

$10 million in revenue or above for 2010

• Thompson Creek
• Newpro
• System Pavers

Under $10 million in revenue for 2010

• Twin Cities Siding Professionals
• Franzoso Contracting
• Southwest Exteriors

Here is a photo taken that evening.  Congratulations to the winners!

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.

GuildQuality is pleased to announce a partnership with Kohler‘s Leading Edge program.  Effective immediately, GuildQuality will provide customer satisfaction surveying for members of the program, enabling the plumbing contractor to 1) receive real-time feedback from clients, 2) evaluate business strengths and weaknesses, and 3) communicate performance scores to prospective clients.

The Leading Edge program is intended for “plumbers who demonstrate a commitment to their business, from the service they provide to the products they sell.”  Kohler has put together a unique offering including GuildQuality surveys, marketing and advertising tools, and online training. Following a successful pilot, we have two Leading Edge plumbers - Lakeside Plumbing and M/R Plumbing Mart – signed up as full members of our community of quality.

For more information, please visit our Kohler partner page.

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.

(more…)

Leah Thayer answers that question in her most recent blog post about selling your byproducts. You have stuff left over after every job that you do. And I don’t mean just materials — you have (at the very least) information, experience, and relationships. What are you doing with that great stuff? Some of it, you might give away to build goodwill, provide better service at no additional cost, or attract new customers. Some of it you might sell.

Years ago, we realized we had all kinds of cool stuff left over after we surveyed customers: Their feedback! So we began repurposing customer comments for our members. This benefits them from a marketing perspective and it benefits us because our members love it.

Aside from the initial effort associated with building the infrastructure to make it happen, there’s relatively little cost to us in helping our members broadcast that feedback. We have the information and we’re using it to increase the value of our service. We were just leaving it around the shop floor. Now we’ve repackaged it and are giving it away as part of our regular service.

I’m a partner in a real estate development business called The I’On Company. We’ve been pretty successful in the development of a 244 acre neighborhood in Mount Pleasant, SC. As we sell our last lots, we’re asking ourselves, “What should we do with all this experience?” We’re not interested in starting another new community right now. But there are plenty of folks who are interested in learning how we did what we did. What if we host a workshop? What if we open our doors and books to people, share with them our vision for the community, development plan, strategy, marketing materials, best home plans, talented consultants, successes, failures, missed opportunities, and experience gleaned from 15 years of development? In addition to experience, we also have a mailing list of hundreds of industry professionals from all over the world — real estate folks we’ve met over the years who’ve shown an interest in how we built the neighborhood.

Our real estate development experience and connections are byproducts that, right now, are just laying around the shop floor. What could you be selling that’s laying around your shop floor. Think about it. Here’s some inspiration from some of the folks who got my wheels turning.

In this webinar, GuildQuality shares specific strategies to differentiate your business online using “quality” as the theme. Stand out from the crowd.

Last week, a remodeler posted a question to NARI’s LinkedIn Discussion Group, asking her peers for advice about customer satisfaction surveying, and many of our wonderful members chimed in with their opinions. On Friday, I shared that thread in GuildQuality’s own discussion group and that seems to have attracted a few more Guildmember comments.

If you’re a member of NARI, I encourage you to check out the discussion — there’s thoughtful advice from many accomplished remodelers, at least ten of whom are GuildQuality members.

While the question was posted in a remodeling forum, I think it’s relevant to any business who surveys their customers, especially companies in the residential construction and real estate space. Here are my own thoughts in reply to her question — some of which were reiterated by the company owners who chimed in on the discussion:

1) Third-party surveying results in honest feedback. The old joke in customer satisfaction surveying is “If you want people to tell you what you want to hear, ask them yourself. If you want to hear the truth, have someone else ask them.” I am always surprised to learn that some builders and remodelers still hand out a survey at the closing table or the end of the job, watch the client complete it, and then brag about their 99% response rate and 99% recommendation rate. Hint: They are lying to you.

2) Response rate is important. As Fred Reichheld notes, lengthy and low-response-rate market research surveying is an altogether different animal than customer satisfaction surveying. Your surveying process is an extension of your service, so do it in a way that engages your clients rather than alienates them. In addition to keeping surveys succinct and relevant, we also give people lots of options to reply (email, phone, and mail). And so we never lose site of the fundamental requirement that our surveying process support the overall service experience, we give respondents an opportunity to share with us their feedback about completing our surveys. Here’s how we do it and what they have to say.

3) Take immediate action. If you sporadically survey your customers, and if only 35% of them reply, you can’t really rely on surveying to give you an accurate picture of performance, and it definitely won’t help you identify issues that need immediate attention. But if 75% of customers reply, and you survey everyone right after contract, close, near the expiration of their warranty, and on the anniversary of their closing every year thereafter, you’ve got a real system in place to monitor quality. And — even more valuable than the reliable trend reporting — you can count on your surveying to churn up real issues that need attention right then. Thankfully, that attention is just as likely to take the form of a thank you for a kind comment or constructive suggestion as it is to be a follow up to attend to something that’s not done to your standard of quality. And if you regularly survey long after the job is done, that check-in is likely to result in a referral or even more work with the same client. A key, however, is that you MUST take action. That means distributing your feedback to your entire team so that the right people can follow up.

4) Benchmark your performance. Lacking anything but reports about average referral rates among builders and remodelers, you might feel pretty good about an 86% recommendation rate. Not so fast. You want to be comparing yourself against the best in the business — not the average. In this market, only the best companies survive and thrive. You can read evidence of that here and here.

5) Don’t just file the feedback away in a drawer. There are all sorts of things you can do with these wonderful comments, and tracking performance from quarter to quarter or superintendent to superintendent is just the beginning. Nothing influences your prospective clients like the opinions and experiences of your past clients. So get that feedback out there where people can find it — whether that’s in a GuildQuality Customer Report, on Twitter, on Facebook, or wherever.

Every member of our small crew pulls a lot of weight. From time to time, I forget the importance of lifting my head up from my own oar, and making sure that everyone’s clear on exactly where we’re rowing. A couple weeks ago, my brother gave me a helpful reminder in the form of a Jim Collins quote:

The number one responsibility of a leader is to catalyze a clear and shared vision for the company and to secure commitment to and vigorous pursuit of that vision.

I spent some time reflecting on that reminder, and shortly thereafter penned a lengthy letter to all of our people here at GuildQuality. After mulling it over for a few days, I thought it appropriate to share those thoughts with all of our Guildmembers and anyone else that has an interest in where GuildQuality is going.

I’ll call out one paragraph from near the end of the letter — mainly because it relates to what GuildQuality is doing right this minute with pictures of our members’ work:

With published feedback from their customers and photographs of their work — thousands of photographs — our members are sharing a powerful statement with those who depend on them for the care and creation of their houses. They are asking people to judge them not by what they say they’ll do, but to judge them by what they’ve done. Judge them by the feedback from hundreds of their customers. Judge them by the examples of their work. And judge them by the company they keep — the best builders, remodelers, contractors, and real estate developers in North America — all of whom are unique, and all of whom share a commitment to quality.

That paragraph, while specifically relevant to our latest site enhancement, shares the theme I intended to convey throughout the letter: That our mission is, was, and will continue to be to elevate the stature of our industry to a level commensurate with its importance.

For those that are interested, here’s the full version of the letter: (more…)

A few weeks ago, the good folks over at Startup Atlanta invited me and a handful of other real estate/construction/technology entrepreneurs to give a presentations about our companies, and answer questions from the crowd. Daniel at Friendly Human snagged me for this “exit interview”. Somehow, he managed to elicit a coherent statement about who GuildQuality is, what we do, and why we do it. What a pro!

This month, we officially launched our partnership with James Hardie to provide customer satisfaction surveying and performance reporting for their Preferred Remodeler Program.  This relationship is an extension of GuildQuality’s strategy of partnering with the leading manufacturers in the industry (other partners include Pella and Wellborn, with more to come this year).

As a benefit of the Preferred Remodeler program, all JH-installed jobs will be surveyed (unless the remodeler opts out).  When surveys are complete, an email will be sent to the business owner enabling them to see how they performed and follow up as appropriate.  Those remodelers who become full GuildQuality members will be recognized on our website and on the Find a Remodeler section of the JH site. 

In the coming weeks, we will share the results of this partnership.  We are delighted to be working with James Hardie, and look forward to spending time with  members of the Advisory Board and executive team next month in Chicago.

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.

(more…)