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

I spotted this Guildmember’s sign in Ansley Park this morning.

What a great group of remodelers! Qualified Remodeler profiled 55 members among the 2010 Guildmaster Award Winners in their latest issue. From the article:

Today, during a housing downturn and slower economic times, satisfying customers can very well mean the difference between success and failure. If your phone has stopped ringing, it may have less to do with your success as a marketer than it does the lingering effect of past customers who are not willing to hire you again or those who would not be willing to refer you to a friend.

Qualified Remodeler goes on to share 55 quotes from each of the Guildmembers about their single best practice. Not surprisingly, the overarching theme in all those quotes is an unwavering dedication to delivering exceptional customer service.

To the chagrin (though not to the surprise) of many of our remodeler members, a number of our home builders have entered their market. The Atlanta Journal & Constitution’s Michelle Shaw wrote a story about the trend in last week’s AJC.

Of the four contractors she interviewed for the story, two were Guildmembers: Dale Contant of Atlanta Design Build and Mark Buelow of Distinctive Remodeling.

All the contractors interviewed (including the builders-turned-remodelers) expressed the same sentiment: Remodeling and homebuilding are two very different professions, requiring different skills and interests. No surprise to our members, but it’s clearly a surprise to many clients and their contractors.

The GuildQuality Guildmaster Awards celebrate exceptional customer service in the building industry. This year (our 5th year) we are excited to recognize 138 home builders, remodelers, contractors, and real estate developers for their history of exemplary service.

To identify the award winners, we reviewed thousands of survey responses from their customers. Following are a few representative comments pulled from the customer feedback of this year’s winners:

Everyone at Ivey has been nothing short of amazing…We look around at our finished house and can’t believe how much Ivey helped us to make it “ours”, having picked out every element we truly love.

While it was wonderful that they communicated well, finished early, and stayed on budget, ultimately the most satisfying part of this was the quality of the finished product, which we feel is outstanding.

SummerHill, Adam and Barb were outstanding. It was a great experience and one I would highly recommend. They worked with us to get into a home we wanted…stayed with us every step of the way.

Of the 2010 Guildmasters 13,000+ survey respondents, 96% would recommend their builder, remodeler, or developer to a friend. That performance is around 25% higher than the average for the industry, and an accomplishment that puts them among the healthiest and most enduring of building businesses. Congratulations to the 2010 Guildmaster Award Winners!

To learn about this year’s Guildmaster Award Qualifications, visit the qualifications page of our website or contact us with any questions.

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.

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.

In this month’s Remodeling Magazine, Ben Morey of Morey Construction and Martha Stinson of Trace Ventures shared how GuildQuality helps them reward and praise excellent service among their teams.

Morey says that perpetuating the client-feedback loop has been one of his “best tools� for maintaining morale and productivity. He shares survey results in meetings, and especially relishes placing printed copies of client comments on employees’ desks.

Thanks Ben and Martha, for sharing!

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.

Susan Bady, Senior Editor of Custom Builder Magazine, penned an excellent article on Payne & Payne, NAHB’s Custom Builder of 2009. I caught a picture of the award announcement at the Custom Builder Symposium in November, and had the pleasure of spending a good bit of time with most of the Paynes.

Congratulations to Case/Design Remodeling, Professional Remodeler’s 2010 Remodeler of the Year. I’m thrilled to see them earn this type of recognition after the kind of year the industry had in 2009. Case is among a large handful of our members that constantly challenge us to improve the way we do business, and they always initiate those conversations with some thoughtful suggestions that would bring value to both them and our larger membership. A number of the enhancements (both small and large) that we’ve made over the last three years are things that emerged from a conversation with the Case team.

As a follow up to our mid-year post on the same subject, here are a list of the 10 most viewed member profiles:

1. Big State Remodeling

2. Carnemark Systems & Design

3. Betenbough Homes

4. Ivey Residential

5. Curb Appeal Renovations

6. Quadrant Homes

7. Conaway Homes

8. Penguin Windows

9. Case Design/Remodeling

10. Structures Building Company

And here are the 10 most-viewed member customer reports:

1. Penguin Windows

2. Heritage Homes

3. Francis Harvey & Sons

4. Thompson Creek

5. Normandy Builders

6. Case Design/Remodeling

7. Jeff Benton Homes

8. Carnemark Systems & Design

9. Curb Appeal Renovations

10. GuildQuality (that’s us!)

11. Westpoint Homes

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).

Way back in 2003, Frank Lott, III of Heritage Homes in Mobile, Alabama signed on with my shiny new company, GuildQuality. Frank is an excellent guy, and one of the members that I sincerely lament isn’t here in Atlanta where I could see him more frequently.

While preparing for a presentation tomorrow, I was spot checking the web presences of a bunch of the home builders, remodelers, developers, and contractors that rely on GuildQuality’s customer satisfaction surveying. When I googled “Heritage Homes, Mobile, AL”, up popped a bunch of Extreme Makeover videos from early 2008.

The Heritage team is filled with wonderful people, and you’ll see that come through in these amazing videos. I encourage you to check them out.

By the way, if you have interesting news to share about your company, don’t hesitate to send it our way. The people that make up our community of quality enjoy reading about our other members.