The latest news from GuildQuality.

Late this evening, we’ll go live with some enhancements that help our members leverage new media to stay better connected with past customers and become more accessible and compelling to prospects.

When I talk about social media, I am referring to two broad categories of web-applications that are built entirely on user generated content: Social Networks and Consumer Rating Sites.

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are helping builders, contractors, and remodelers to connect with their customers. John Wieland is tweeting and blogging about his Get Housing Moving tour. Henderer Design + Build is collecting fans on Facebook. And here at GuildQuality, I’m soliciting product feedback from more than 100 of our users via a LinkedIn discussion group.

Consumer rating sites like Kudzu and Yelp are helping consumers find reputable businesses, and they’re also providing search engines with highly relevant content. Google and Yahoo give special consideration to consumer reviews — lots of reviews (good or bad) can drive you closer to the top of search results. So if your public ratings are largely favorable, that is likely to give a consumer the extra confidence they need to reach out to you.

Connecting you with your promoters: With tonight’s new release, we have overhauled the page that displays after someone completes a survey (or returns to our website to review a survey they completed in the past).

Beginning tomorrow, if your survey respondent gave you high marks, we can serve up the social media sites of your choice. On the social network side of things, we’ll enable them to follow you on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn, or become a fan on Facebook. it can connect your survey respondents with the social media sites of your choice. You can also include links to your profile page on several consumer ratings sites, thereby encouraging your happiest customers to spread the word about their positive experience with you company.

And as with our other marketing resources, you’ll be able to track how much social media traffic we have created for you in the marketing section of our application.

If your customer did not give you high marks, they’ll see a simple “thank you for responding” message. Also, we previously used the post-survey-submit page to solicit feedback from folks about their experience with our surveying process. And we got a TON of great commentary. We’re still doing that, but rather than the rating request being the primary focus of the post-survey-submit page, it is a secondary request at the bottom of the page.

I am excited about this new release, as I think it opens a lot of doors for our members, your customers, and GuildQuality to further connect people with information relevant to the betterment of our profession. To manage which content is displayed to your customers, visit the new Social Media section of your account (this link will start working on April 21).

Last week, Mark Miles and I returned from Minneapolis, where we presented GuildQuality to Pella’s 70 Branch Champions. Our presentation at the Pella Conference was part of a larger discussion of some impressive expansions of the Pella Certified Contractor program.

Over the last few months, GuildQuality has been working with the Pella team to create some specialized services for their contractors. Our mutual goal is to provide them with some resources to help them deliver the best possible customer experience.

I’m especially excited about this relationship, because it draws heavily on the GUILD part of GuildQuality. The work of each Pella Certified Contractor reflects on more than just the Pella Brand — it reflects on every other PCC as well. Our work in helping each PCC succeed will help every member of this elite group of contractors.

For more details about GuildQuality’s special services for Pella Certified Contractors, please contact us.

From the good folks at Pella:

It is time for the Pella Pro Expo!

This is your last chance to register for a day full of fun, food, and prizes! This year we are bringing in over 18 local vendors with a focus on sustainable design, offering up to 3 CEU credits, serving barbeque, and offering a chance to win a new Toyota truck and many other prizes. We will also hold installation demonstrations of Pella products and have speakers Patrick O’Toole from Qualified Remodeler (40 Ways to Make Your Phone Ring) and Mark Richardson, president of CASE Design & Remodeling and author of How Fit is Your Business. We will be holding a special prize drawing for the builders and architects that bring in a current set of plans for bid.

Continued education courses will begin at 2:00 pm, and there will be a limited number of seats per course per time slot. The course schedule has been attached to this email, but additional information can be found at the Pella Pro Expo site. This is also the site to register for the Expo.

To register for courses, please contact Andrea Beck (abeck at pellasoutheast dot com) with the name and time of the presentation or with the presentation’s assigned number and letter (Courses that begin at 2:00 are 2A, 2B, or 2C. Courses that begin at 3:15 are 3A, 3B, or 3C. Courses that begin at 5:00 are 5A, 5B, 5C).

We hope to see you there!

Pella Southeast (click for directions)
l2605 North Berkeley Lake Rd, Suite 400
Duluth, GA 3009

At GuildQuality, the significant majority of our work is focused on one of four area: surveying customers, continually enhancing our reporting system, growing our community of quality, and celebrating excellence in the building, remodeling, and real estate profession. The celebrating part is one of my favorites.

We do that by talking about the great things our members have accomplished (in this blog and through press releases), and by helping our members promote their exceptional performance or highlight their commitment to superior service (with our Qlist and customer report).

A large number of our members have taken the next step and started promoting their membership in our community of quality. Obviously, we love this, as it has a big impact on consumer awareness of the GuildQuality brand. This morning, I reviewed all of our web traffic, and was not surprised to see that, in the last 90 days, more than 5% of all visitors to guildquality.com were referred to us from one of our members’ websites.

Most of the time, these websites simply indicate somewhere that the member uses GuildQuality to survey customers, and help the team ensure that they’re delivering an exceptional customer experience. Often, they are referencing a Guildmaster Award, and occasionally, they are showing off our nifty Guildmember Logo. I encourage all of this — you can find some great resources for promoting your membership in the marketing section of your account.

Following are the top 10 members from the last 90 days (in alphabetical order) that refer traffic to GuildQuality.com. It’s a diverse group, including a Top 400 homebuilder, one of Canada’s leading remodelers, a Southern Living Custom Homebuilder, a replacement contractor that’s new to GuildQuality, and one of our first members from way back in 2003:

Amsted Design Build Ottowa, ON

Classic Remodeling Charleston, SC

Conaway Homes Whitehouse, TX

Craig Custom Builders Wayne, NJ

Distinctive Remodeling Roswell, GA

McClurg Remodeling & Construction Services Marcellus, NY

TR Building & Remodeling Redding & New Canaan, CT

Twin Cities Siding Professionals St. Paul, MN

Villa Builders Arnold, MD

Wayne Harbin Builder Williamsburg & Yorktown, VA

Thanks to all the members that are helping us raise awareness of membership in our community of quality, and thanks especially to these ten that are leading the way!

In the Customer Satisfaction Reporting sections of your account, you may notice a few subtle upgrades.

First, we now show the survey response rate for the data set represented on the page (this is on all pages);

Second, on the Scorecard, you can now sort the data by number of survey responses;

Third,on the Scorecard, when you are viewing lots of question answers represented together, we’re also showing you how many surveys all of those answers came from. As an example, in the 2009 Q1 bar above, you now know that those 2,645 answers came from 155 customers.

Two more upgrades that aren’t represented in the image above:

We modified the survey itself so that “Clear my response” is now “Not Applicable”. This makes it more obvious to respondents that they can skip questions.

We enhanced the Projects & Surveying filters so you can now pull a report of all projects or customers who don’t have some filters listed. This makes it easy to update project information for the random projects that didn’t go into the system with all the right fields (project manager, salesperson, division, etc).

Congratulations to Wickstead Works for winning EarthCraft’s Remodeler of the Year Award. Read all about it at the Atlanta Real Estate Forum. WicksteadWorks became a Guildmember in November 2008, and we’re glad to have them as part of our community of quality.

In October, I published some summary stats contrasting customer satisfaction among our members that have grown (in number of customers), those that have shrunk, and those that have shut their doors.

Michael & Dave just updated that data for me, and the results aren’t surprising. I intend to post more elaboration later, but in the meantime, here’s the summary: (just added the chart below)

Growing Businesses: Active businesses that have increased their number of customers in the most recent 12 months relative to the prior period. Average Recommendation Rate in the most recent 12 month period = 96.1% (up 2% from six months ago).

Shrinking Businesses: Active businesses that have had fewer customers in the most recent 12 months relative to the prior period. Average Recommendation Rate in the most recent 12 month period = 95.6% (up 3.5% from six months ago).

Failed Businesses: Businesses that have closed down in the last twelve months. Average Recommendation Rate in the most recent 12 month period = 74.3% (down 6.5% from six months ago).

The recommendation rate gap between growing businesses and failed businesses has more than doubled in six months.

This post from long-time member Structures Building Company has been live for more than six months, but I just noticed it.

The post starts with, “We believe that each day is full of opportunities for us to leave our signature on all of our work. As individuals and a team, we keep ourselves accountable to each other but really value the feedback of each of our clients.”

And it ends with some very kind words about what our service means to their team. Thanks guys! It’s feedback like this that keeps us at it.

On a related note, Structures member ID number is 13. That means they’ve been with us since the very beginning.

Intown Renovations is working on Saint Charles in Virginia-Highland. This is part of a new series, wherein I post every time I see one of our member’s signs and can snap a picture.

John is on a road trip. From the press release:

“John Wieland, chief executive officer and founder of leading southeast homebuilder John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods, today launched the “Get Housing Moving” tour to educate consumers about the importance of the new home industry in economic recovery and to build awareness of the value of buying a home while prices are deeply discounted and interest rates are at historic lows.”

The tour involves an RV and an inflatable mattress. I encourage you to follow his progress in his own words: John launched his blog on March 5 with an inaugural tweet. You can also follow him on Twitter.

You can now follow GuildQuality on Twitter.

Thanks to Erin for setting this up, and for getting everyone on the Twitter bandwagon.

If you are a GuildQuality member, please join the GuildQuality LinkedIn Discussion Group.

I started this some time ago on a whim, seeing that it was new functionality offered by LinkedIn. Soon after, a handful of our members actually started requesting to join. More recently, I’ve found it to be an excellent venue for bouncing GuildQuality-related ideas around and soliciting advice.

Last week, I invited a bunch of members, and the number of folks in the group jumped to over 100 (congratulations to Terry of Harrington Homes for being the 100th). I’ve kept the group invitation-only. The limited access enables us to discuss semi-proprietary subjects.

“Even in this very challenging housing environment, the appeal of ecologically-friendly homes seemed to overcome the gloom in the economy. Our eco-promotion resonated strongly with consumers and drove more qualified traffic to our sales centers,” said Kathi James, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Beazer Homes. “This led to over 500 net new home orders in the month of February.”

From CNBC. This announcement yesterday contributed to Beazer’s 65% jump in stock price.

Last night, David pushed another enhancement to the GQ reporting system. You won’t notice most of the work, but there are a few things relating to exporting data that are worth pointing out.

You can now export information from the Projects & Surveying section. Want to get a list of all your customers who haven’t responded to surveys? Here’s where you go. Want to get a list of all of your customers that have wrong numbers or bad email addresses? Look no further than this fancy button. Want to get a list of all customers from a particular neighborhood who worked with a particular salesperson? Voila!

We also tightened up survey response exporting feature. You’ve been able to export all your survey feedback for several years, but for some reason, those exports only included customer name and address. They now include phone numbers and email addresses. Want to get a contact list of your happiest customers (or least happy)? Now your export includes all the info you need to create a mail merge or an email list.

Lastly, and by popular demand, we removed the pre-formatting of exports. Our “power” users (me included) regularly export this data for their own analysis. Before diving into their serious number crunching, they had to delete the GQ logo, remove the freeze panes, eliminate the colors, and simplify the text formatting. Now your exports are pristine — column headers are in row 1, and the moment you open the file, you are ready to start crunching.

A couple final thoughts about why we believe exports are really important:

1) We can’t predict every analytical need for every member. Even if we could, designing a reporting application that did everything for everyone would invariably result in a reporting application that did very little well, and lots of things poorly. Data exports empower you to do what you need to do with your data.

2) We don’t want to trap you. I have been trapped by software before. I have been forced to stay with systems for no other reason than they held my data hostage and made it impossible for me to switch without enduring great pain and great cost. The end result for the service provider was, instead of just losing a moderately satisfied paying customer, they kept a paying customer who actively encouraged others NOT to buy their service. The end result for me was pain and sadness. I don’t want you to experience that feeling, and that’s why we let you export your data. This is part of our larger objective to earn your business every month.

GuildQuality has a handful of valued vendors, without whom we couldn’t deliver our service. Our printer, Imagers, is one that’s especially critical to our success.

Imagers prints and mails all of our survey mailers. And this is a complicated job that required a LOT of up front work from both GQ and Imagers. Every single survey mailer is unique to the recipient — personalized with their contact info, the relevant survey information they need, and our member’s full color, high-resolution logo. The mailers are sharp and they definitely contribute to a great survey experience for customers.

I am reminded of Imagers importance for a few reasons. First, we’ve just wrapped up an especially large surveying project. GuildQuality just surveyed thousands of customers for candidates of Remodeling Magazine’s Big50 Awards. As always, Imagers executed flawlessly.

They also take care of our Guildmaster certificates — a project we’re starting up right now. They’ll print hundreds of personalized diploma-quality certificates with raised stamped seals. These certificates are works of art.

But perhaps the main reason I value our relationship with Imagers is more about what they don’t do: They don’t make me worry. They don’t require maintenance or management. They don’t bark or hem or haw. They simply get the job done, and they do it better than I would expect. This is the kind of experience we learn from and seek to emulate in the service we deliver to our members and their customers.