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

Alison Sturm of Attention to Detail Home Remodeling posted about this event in the GuildQuality LinkedIn Discussion Group:

In Atlanta, on November 5, the National Association of the Remodeling Industry will be hosting an informative set of classes tailored for those whose small businesses focus on services in client’s homes.

There will be at least 3 classes focused on new ways to market yourself, 3 classes focused on protecting yourself & your company, as well as a host of other useful topics. You may sign up for a half day or a full day of classes, all of which offer continuing education credits, and plenty of networking opportunities with remodelers, designers, builders, & trades.

Read more and sign up here.

We’re researching alternative accounting systems for GuildQuality with plans to make a switch within the next three months. The various service providers we’re contemplating have been helpful in responding to requests for information or clarification about their various features. But their counsel is, of course, biased.

I’m interested in learning how other businesses like ours do things. I couldn’t find any clear guidance online, and I don’t personally know any executives with other web-based subscription services.

For the last five years or so, we’ve relied on Basecamp (a 37Signals product) as our internal project collaboration tool. Of all the services we use, Basecamp has a business model and billing requirements that are most similar to our own. After reading this article describing a new initiative by 37Signals CEO Jason Fried showed up in my Twitter feed, I thought I’d ping Jason asking him what they use. I posted a message to him on Twitter: “Can you share which software 37signals uses for accounting?” Six minutes later, I got my answer.

In the last week or so, Angie’s List enabled non-members to provide business reviews. As a result, we’ve added them to the list of review services our members can have appear after their customers respond to a survey. You can read more about this functionality here.

Worth noting, unlike the other sites we link to, you can’t add an Angie’s List icon to your Profile Page, as publicly accessible company profiles are not available on Angie’s List. So while GuildQuality can help you encourage customers to talk about you on Angie’s List, we can’t yet link to an Angie’s List profile page of any kind.

Click here to manage which sites your customers see after they’ve completed a survey.

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.

We’re happy to report that one of our Guildmembers, WindowPRO of Cleveland, Ohio, has been named a 2009 Dealer of the Year by Window & Door magazine.  Recognized for Excellence in Innovative Thinking, WindowPRO has operated as a family-owned business for 80 years while continuing to reinvent itself through the decades.  In the most recent transition, WindowPRO began carrying the Marvin line of windows and doors and re-branded the company.

Jake Zahnow, President of WindowPRO, shares some terrific advice for owners — “Sometimes you’ve got to burn the ships and say we’re going in a new direction, all based on the belief that what’s in the future will be better than what’s in the past.”

Click here to read the article.

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.

Please join us this Thursday, September 24 at 2pm EST, for a presentation by Jon Fogg of The Berke Group.

Webinar Topic: “Beyond Survival… on to Recovery”

Click to register.

We have run out of adjectives to describe the last couple of years in our industry.  Most of us have necessarily adopted a “survival” mode, and because of this are still in business.  However, there are signs that we are poised for recovery.  What will the recovery look like? What should we be doing right now to compete?  How will we maximize revenue and margin as the economy and the housing sector begin to recover? Jon Fogg from the Berke Group will discuss these topics in our upcoming Webinar on September 24 at 2pm EST.

About Jon Fogg:

Jon is a seasoned business strategist and executive with more than 30 years of new home sales experience and  sales management experience.  Prior to joining the Berke Group in 2006, Jon led the sales organization of one of the country’s largest home builders. He has weathered 9 housing cycles and has some interesting insights on steps companies should be taking right now to position themselves to best take advantage of the next stage of the housing cycle. The Berke Group is a management consulting firm that helps CEOs and sales leadership teams maximize their revenues and get the most from their sales organizations.

Click here to register for the webinar.

UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 30 — We’ve finished compiling the full report (Thanks for your help, Michael!). Click here to view and/or download it.

In our survey from last week, more than 100 Guildmembers offered their predictions for their and the market’s performance in the near term. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which members have offered us their predictions.

Once we finish compiling all the commentary, we’ll publish a complete summary report. [UPDATE: The full report is now available here.] Until then, here are the highlights:

While fewer people (4%) predict the market will worsen than at any time in the past year, a dramatically larger percentage (64%) believe we’ve made all of our gains and predict that the next six months will be about the same as things are presently.

Also of note, the “Guildmember Confidence Index” declined for the first time since we began tracking it a year ago. While not as high as last quarter, anything above zero means that, on the whole, members expect improvement. While they continue to forecast improvement, they foresee less improvement in the near term than when they were asked the same question in prior quarters.

We’ll wait a few more days to give everyone an opportunity to reply to the survey, and then we’ll compile the feedback into a single document. You can read more about past Guildmember Confidence Reports by clicking here.

In the most recent Remodeling Magazine, Victoria Downing penned a tight article on why many remodelers (and custom builders or developers) rely on customer satisfaction surveying to deliver a great customer experience, how they use it in their day to day operations, and how it can help them to drive up referrals.

Longtime member Trace Ventures enjoyed the spotlight in this article. On a related note, Trace Ventures was profiled by HGTVpro in 2008 for their innovative employee compensation strategy that weaves customer satisfaction and gross profit into the bonus plan.

In July, we launched a new service focused on surveying our member’s sales prospects, typically after the initial appointment.  The response from our members was positive and prospect surveying accounted for 14% of our total survey volumes last month.

We’re hearing that close ratios are improving, as members listen to their prospects and better understand how they are performing in sales situations.  The prospect survey also sets the stage for future GuildQuality surveying, and reinforces that you care about feedback.

If you are interested in learning more, contact us.

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.

Last week, Remodeling published an opinion piece by Michael Anschel, a Minneapolis-based remodeler. In it Michael predicts that remodelers (and I would add home builders as well) are facing a new kind of competition. These companies are “run by people who understand business and like efficiency and standards.” These are people who…

…hire the right people; they will manage direct expenses and overhead; they will maximize profits. They will take our slow and lumbering process of estimating and find ways to automate, systematize, and improve the accuracy through constant feedback and constant improvement mechanisms.

With regard to competition, I think he is absolutely correct.

He also makes a statement about the virtues of heightened regulation. I disagree with him on that point, both in the comments of his post and in a prior post on our blog. I am interested to hear what you have to say, so please chime in.