How restoration companies can build company culture around the idea of continuous improvement

March 9th, 2021 by

Molly McRedmond

Is your company focused on continuous growth, improvement, and customer satisfaction? Find out how Legacy Restoration achieves all three.

We spoke with Adam Timberlake, Vice President of Sales for Legacy Restoration, about how the company uses GuildQuality to improve their business. With 16 years of experience in the industry, Adam recognizes the importance of measuring and monitoring honest feedback in order to implement improvements.

The company has been in business since 2011 and a GuildQuality member since 2015, and they specialize in exterior remodeling services, including roofing, siding, windows, gutters, and insurance claims. After starting in Minneapolis, Legacy Restoration has branched out to the Chicago and Denver areas in recent years.

Core Value: Continuous Improvement

When Scott Mullins started Legacy Restoration, he laid out a company constitution that would guide everything they did. The constitution included the company’s purpose, vision, and core values.

Legacy’s values and vision aren’t just words on paper that employees read on the first day of the job; the values and the company constitution permeate the company’s day-to-day activities.

One of the company’s core values is continuous improvement. The company aims to always improve their own performance and the lives of all their customers.

After facing some production challenges and growing pains in 2015, Legacy knew it needed a third-party source for feedback in order to measure and improve performance. As Adam put it,

“Turns out you can’t get better unless you know how you’re doing.”

Since then, they have been surveying all their customers through GuildQuality.

Surveying Every Customer

When they first signed up for GuildQuailty, there was a lot of debate about how to implement surveying, but they decided that they needed to survey every single customer. No matter how the experience goes, Legacy wants feedback from everyone.

Adam sees this as invaluable to their goal of continuous improvement. Cherry-picking which customers to survey wouldn’t provide them with the honest and useful feedback that they need to become a better business.

“It was essential for us to have alignment with that core value of continuous improvement.”

Legacy sends out a GuildQuality survey to every single customer at the same point of the process, every time.

Adam’s advice to anyone looking to make the most of their GuildQuality membership:

“Don’t cut corners. Survey every person.”

When feedback comes in, project managers, leadership, and many other team members receive an alert, so feedback is transparent and widely shared across the company. All survey feedback has eyes on it.

The team reads the survey comments, views the metrics, and looks for patterns in the data. Legacy also looks at how they’re doing compared to their peers in the industry.

The metrics that GuildQuality measures, such as cleanliness and safety, work done right, scheduling, and installation, help the company study their performance, and they find great value in being able to see how they stack up in those areas against peer companies.

“That feedback helps us to improve in areas that we would otherwise not be able to.”

In addition to surveying their customers, Legacy Restoration also surveys their employees anonymously multiple times a year to get their feedback on how the company is doing.

This commitment to surveying and gathering feedback from both customers and employees reflects the company’s commitment to always growing and doing better. After all, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know about it.

Legacy Restoration is always in pursuit of excellence, and this can’t be achieved without honest feedback on performance.

Company Culture

Many successful companies owe their accomplishments to their remarkable company culture. Legacy Restoration maintains their strong and well-defined company culture by focusing on their common purpose, vision, and values every day at work.

In addition to continuous improvement, another company value is giving back to the community, and every year, employees get to participate in volunteer activities. Legacy Restoration partners with Habitat for Humanity and Volunteers of America, along with other local organizations.

The company participates in volunteer and charity activities throughout the year, but especially around the holidays. During a typical year, they gather together after their holiday party to hand-tie blankets for foster kids, and they also participate in Christmas family sponsorships, shopping for and wrapping gifts to be delivered to families in need.

Along with bonding through community service activities, the team comes together by implementing company values every day and working towards their common purpose of to improve the quality of life for customers and employees alike.

Facing Challenges

The global COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge for everyone, understandably so. Individuals and businesses have had to make drastic changes to adapt to the constantly evolving situation we find ourselves in.

Previously, Legacy Restoration gathered a lot of leads from door-knocking but had to change directions on this and find new lead sources. They also had to adjust how they were meeting and working with customers, to follow social distancing guidelines and keep everyone safe.

Legacy had to quickly create new systems for operations and sales. They had a remote sales process in the works for a year or two in the future, but they had to implement that as soon as they could.

Thanks to their strong internal culture, a lot of daily meetings, and discipline, they were able to hit their original plan for the year.

“We were ready culturally, and we were prepared financially.”

Adam summed up the year in a way that we can all probably agree with: the first few months felt slow, but the second half of the year went by in a flash. The year was a difficult one, but once the team was able to adjust their processes, it was ultimately a strengthening year for the business.

Planning

Part of why Legacy was so prepared to pull off success during 2020 is that they are big on planning.

“We’re planning freaks.”

Legacy Restoration starts their annual planning process for the next year in late August. They plan for revenue, spending, hiring, initiatives, and they are careful to manage their cash flow in anticipation of seasonal downturns in business.

Another way they take seasonality into account is by offering other types of work that can be performed during cold weather, such as siding or window replacement. They don’t take winters off.

This practice of thoroughly preparing for the next year has been key to their growth and success. It’s part of their focus on continuous improvement, and goes hand-in-hand with their collection and review of quality customer feedback.

Success Will Follow

Adam views GuildQuality as one of the company’s partners on the road to success. Other crucial components are planning, a strong company culture, and a focus on building and constantly improving a successful business.

Adam recommends focusing on business fundamentals and performance results rather than how much revenue a company can generate in a year. Do the work right, and success will follow.

“There’s no silver bullet. It’s hard work.”

It’s challenging for contractors and builders to start up and stay successful, but with planning, discipline, and good business practices, Legacy Restoration has built up a successful company with multiple locations, pursuing constant improvement and excellence in customer satisfaction every day.