GuildQuality

When visiting with friends this Christmas Eve, I spotted one of Revival Construction‘s candy houses. Wright and his team recently remodeled and expanded the main floor of their home. View more of these great candy houses and read about their history on Revival’s Facebook page. What a wonderful tradition!

“The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.” - John Naisbitt

This report contains a summary of the feedback received from our members in the Q4 2011 Market Predictions Survey conducted during the week of December 19. This survey is a continuation of the survey we began in October 2008. In this and prior surveys, GuildQuality requested feedback from the owners and operators among our hundreds of home builders, remodelers, contractors, and real estate developers that use our service. In each of the surveys, more than 100 people have provided feedback. 185 of our builders, remodelers, developers, and home services contractors responded to the 4th quarter survey.

It’s worth remembering that this is what people expect to happen in the near future. 6% anticipate the real estate and construction market will be worse six months from now; 39% forecast improvement. In every survey except our very first in Q4 2008, more have forecasted improvement than decline.

For your reading pleasure, our members shared the following comments, along with their forecasts: (more…)

How do Degnan Design Builders, Inc. and Creative Contracting Inc. keep their customers satisfied? By maximizing client feedback using GuildQuality! Check out the Professional Remodeler interview with both company owners here:

This past year at GuildQuality has been fast paced and full of exciting changes. We introduced new product features, launched new partnerships, welcomed a fresh batch of wonderful employees…oh, and we moved to Midtown!

Whether you’ve been a member of GuildQuality for years, or you’ve just recently joined our community of quality, you will want to take a moment to familiarize yourself with our recently developed components built to make your life easier.

In November, GuildQuality optimized our reporting app for iPhones, Androids and Blackberries! Mobile devices make real-time delivery of our survey feedback even more useful to you. Login, Survey Response, and our Dashboard are easy to view via mobile. We’ve even optimized the actual survey form that your customers use to complete online surveys. Not only does this enable you to view feedback quicker, but it allows your customers to provide information more efficiently.

Speaking of feedback, have you opted in to GuildQuality reviews? GuildQuality reviews provide a wonderful opportunity to empower your customers to share more information about their experience with your company. Most of our Guildmembers leverage the customer feedback they receive through our new reviews feature to strengthen their brand. With the addition of GuildQuality Reviews, more robust, useful, informative commentary is also increasingly finding its way into search results. Prior to launching GuildQuality Reviews, we piloted the feature with a number of our early adopter members. Their most popular request was for us to allow them to add their own responses to reviews they receive, and now you can!

If you’ve been with GuildQuality since before September of this year, you can appreciate our GuildQuality dashboard redesign. Our goal with the new design was to enable you to do and see as much as possible from one location, minimizing your need to dive deeper into the account in order to see trends in performance. For your convenience we’ve added a Scorecard right on the dash, Recent Responses are now vertically oriented, and you are able to directly publish comments.

In addition to new product features, 2011 brought about a partnership with Kohler. GuildQuality is now the preferred provider of customer satisfaction surveying for members of Kohler’s Leading Edge Program.

We welcome a new partner and four more talented folks to the GuildQuality team this year, three sales associates, Andy Cesario, Mike Sveda and Rebekah Taylor, along with our new Marketing Communications Manager, Erica England.

This is just a glimpse of all that we’ve accomplished this year at GuildQuality. We were extremely fortunate to have experienced another successful year working with top building and remodeling professionals who value customer satisfaction as much as we do. Thank you to all of our fantastic members!

P.S. If you haven’t visited our new office, pop over to the big city in 2012 and come see us in the heart of Midtown Atlanta.

Congratulations to DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen, winners of the November daily5Remodel snapshots contest! With nearly 3,500 votes, Jeremy Thompsen of DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen is now the proud owner of a white 16G iPad 2, courtesy of GuildQuality.

DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen submitted this story about their clients Janet and Rob Beaumont!

We are thrilled to sponsor this year’s Replacement Contractor Executive Conference powered by Replacement Contractor. This year’s conference is being held February 23–24, 2012 in Las Vegas.

In addition to hearing from industry experts and learning from other professional contractors from around the country, this year’s conference will feature the Replacement Contractor Service Excellence Awards Dinner conducted by GuildQuality and sponsored by James Hardie.

All replacement contractors who register for the conference before December 30, 2011 are eligible for the Replacement Contractor Service Excellence Awards. As a Guildmember, you are automatically eligible for the awards with your registration prior to December 30, 2011. Those companies ranking highest will be presented with the Service Excellence Award.

Registration for the conference is $495 for Guildmembers—a significant savings off the $695 regular registration rate. Click here to register, and be sure to check “Sponsor Guest” as your registration type.

We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!

The Home Builders Association of Illinois held its Installation and Awards Banquet this week in which it chose Scott Sevon, GMR, GMB, CGP, CGR, CAPS, partner with MAW Chicago as Remodeler of the Year with HBAI. Sevon is also on the advisory board with Qualified Remodeler magazine.

“I feel very grateful to be voted the best in the state! Although this award singled me out, it is our firm’s award. MAW Chicago, our team of employees and trade partners make this award possible,” he says. “As my partner, Mike Nagel, CGR,CAPS, and I believe, we try to give back to this great industry. We each stay involved at the local, state and national levels of our HBAs. This gives us an edge over most in our industry because we are current on rules, regulations, requirements and the pulse of our industry.” Read more here.

MAW Chicago, a construction company specializing in residential and commercial interior and exterior design and renovation has been a GuildQuality member since June 2011. Congratulations Scott and MAW team!

GuildQuality member, LEFKO Renovations, earned a mention in the December issue of Fortune! Owner, David Lefkovits shares his secret to successful marketing in the latest Fortune Venture column.

LEFKO Renovations is a family owned residential renovation and remodeling company and a sister company of the LEFKO Group, a real estate development, general contracting and investments company co-founded by David.

In addition to David’s leadership at LEFKO, he is also a partner of Custom Building Group, a builder of luxury homes in Metro Atlanta. Congratulations David and LEFKO team!

Michael Nagel, partner of MAW Chicago LLC, was named the 2011 National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Remodeler of the Year this past November. Due to his NAHB involvement, superior business management skills and outstanding contributions to the remodeling industry, Nagel received top honors. Read more on Michael Nagel and his NAHB win here.

MAW Chicago LLC has been a GuildQuality member since June 2011. Congratulations Michael and MAW team!

Nagel receives his Remodeler of the Year award from (left to right) Chris Dana, Pella Corp.; Rob Heselbarth, Qualified Remodeler; and Bob Peterson, CGR, CAPS, CGP, NAHBR chair, during the NAHB.

GuildQuality partner, James Hardie, was contacted by the Discovery Channel Network to participate in a segment for their show, “How It’s Made” which airs nationally on the Science Channel. Check out their segment here!

GuildQuality member 1-800-HANSONS was recently named National Contractor of the Year by Replacement Contractor Magazine, a publication that recognizes the top window, siding and roofing contractors in the United States.

“We work very hard to provide our customers with the best products and service before and after the sale. In this industry it’s all about trust and we work very hard at earning and keeping the trust of our clients,” states owner and President Brian Elias.

Congratulations 1-800-HANSONS!

Even the best businesses get negative reviews. The trick is utilizing that feedback constructively to help your business grow. Negative reviews can be an ideal platform for you to demonstrate just how much you care about your customers. Yelp’s blog for business owners recently posted a video specifically about the positive side of negative reviews, take a look.

Many of our GuildQuality members leverage their customer feedback to strengthen their brand through our survey process which presents a great opportunity to let customers share more information. Their published comments find 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. Don’t shy away from reviews! Encourage your customers and open the door to valuable commentary.

Two weeks ago, we introduced GQ Mobile, in which we optimized the most frequently viewed pages in our reporting application for iOS, Blackberry, and Android browsers.

On Friday, we extended the pages optimized for mobile to include the form that recipients use to complete a survey.

To the right is a screen shot from my iPhone of a survey from our test account. As with our regular survey, the mobile version prompts respondents to provide ratings on all the major aspects of the building, remodeling, purchasing, or renting experience, and makes it easy for people to share additional comments on each question.

The final part of this mobile project will be complete in early December, when we add QR codes to our redesigned survey mailers.

Forbes just picked up a story about I’On that was published by MarketUrbanism a few years ago. Real estate development is difficult, and politics make it more so. An excerpt from the original MarketUrbanism post:

It is important to recognize that our society has politicized property rights and democratized land use to the point that most re-zonings now involve a political campaign. Even with great built examples such as the historic area of Charleston and the Old Village of Mt. Pleasant, one should not make the naïve mistake of assuming that citizens or their elected leaders will understand the concept after hearing a lecture or reading a few articles on Traditional Neighborhood Development. Some may take years to understand the concept, while others may never understand it. And there are some who feel that accepting the design principles of TND involves an admission that what has been built over the last 50 years was a mistake. They may be unable or unwilling to make such an admission. Also, one should not assume that if a politician or appointed board member likes a project or thinks it is “the right thing to do” they will necessarily support it in a public forum. Few are those who possess the political will or guts to stand up to an angry room full of NIMBYs, or a well-connected citizen.

It is extraordinarily difficult to win such a political campaign in most areas of the country for several reasons: (1) Prior to World War II people were excited about growth. Their expectations were that what was built would be beautiful and contribute to their quality of life. However, the overall quality of the built environment of the last 50 years has been poor. This makes people distrustful of anything new, and gives rise to a legitimate belief that anything new will, by association with most of what has been built over the last 50 years, will necessarily be bad; (2) the private/exclusive mindset embodied in the suburban mentality (which has spread to many urban areas) leads people to believe that any more development will degrade their privacy and exclusivity; and (3) it is in the best short-term economic interests of existing property owners because limiting supply of new homes, puts upward pressure on existing home prices.

I’ve mentioned I’On a few times in our own blog. Visit our website here. Also, this Forbes post may help to explain why I occasionally rant about how the political and regulatory process is destroying the building profession.

December 7 Update: Steve Kendrick just pointed out to me that the house in the background is an I’On custom home built by Mount Pleasant builder & remodeler, and long-time Guildmember, Structures Building Company!