Are your customers telling you the whole truth?
Pella Platinum Elite and GuildQuality: Using Customer Surveys and Reviews to Build and Grow Your Business
September 2nd, 2022 byIntroduction
When it comes to growing your contracting business, few things are as important as your reputation—and nothing is better for your reputation than becoming a Pella Platinum Elite member.
A Pella Platinum Elite membership is a guaranteed mark of quality your customers will recognize. But did you know that it also comes with access to GuildQuality, one of the best ways to build your reputation and grow your business?
GuildQuality is an online review platform that helps potential customers find and connect with contractors. It provides incredible benefits that can help your business thrive, as these two stories from GuildQuality members will show.
Meet GuildQuality Users
Walter Skura founded his replacement windows, siding, and doors company, Valdicass, in 1999. The early days were mainly spent subcontracting, but as Skura’s reputation grew so did the number of jobs coming to Valdicass directly.
While the business had its ups and downs over the years, Skura notes that since joining GuildQuality in 2018 things have been strong. Today, there are seven full-time members of Valdicass, including sales staff.
“We use GuildQuality to create customized surveys and gather customer reviews,” says Skura, “the results show us where we can focus on changing our services, what we need to improve, what we can do better. The world changes every day. We have to adapt and improve as well.”
Krueger Brothers Construction started using GuildQuality in 2014. Founded in 2009 by brothers Michael and Matthew, they now have over 60 employees. But it wasn’t always that way.
The brothers initially went into business as a two-man roofing business. Over time they branched out into siding, windows, and decks to become full outdoor remodeling specialists. Each new trade came as a result of customer feedback, which the Krueger Brothers rely heavily on to grow and improve their company.
“It’s all about how we can create a better customer experience,” says Michael Krueger, “we’ve just been pushing that since we started. And I think our team understands that—that culture is in our blood. We’re okay about honest feedback because we thrive off that stuff.”
True Partners in Growth
GuildQuality is like a personal assistant regarding customer reviews, following up and collecting data automatically as a natural extension of your customer experience. You can create customized surveys for your customers and attach them to KPIs, performance or project managers, your sales team, or any other aspect of your business.
Not only will you get better and more targeted feedback on each point of contact in the customer lifecycle, but you’ll get it all without the pressure or discomfort of asking customers to provide honest feedback directly.
“It is really nice to have that extra support from someone who can reach out to those homeowners when we can’t,” says Walter Skura, “it takes away some stress from worrying about that part of the business.”
The Krueger Brothers, too, have long known just how valuable customer feedback is to their business. But the more customers they acquired, the harder it became to keep up with customer surveys.
“Getting good feedback is an art form. You have to know what questions to ask, you have to ask them at the right time, and you have to follow up with those who don’t respond. We needed something that could help us do that,” says Michael Krueger, “because if you call once and they’re not there, you leave a voicemail, then you forget about it. You miss the opportunity to learn from them.”
It’s that need for consistent, honest reviews and feedback that led both companies to GuildQuality.
The Valdicass team praises the customer support they’ve received from GuildQuality, noting that it only ever takes a quick call or an email to get answers to their questions. They feel like there is a true partnership there, noting that GuildQuality handles the legwork of gathering customer information. This lets Skura and his team continue to focus on providing excellent service and growing the business.
Using Feedback to Boost Team Morale and Business Growth
It’s no surprise that Krueger encourages others to join GuildQuality, emphasizing how important it is to get customer feedback to grow your business.
“In the very beginning, it was like, oh my, we’ve got a lot to improve on,” says Michael, “and so it was month to month improving how we do things in our process. The heavier lifting was back then, but eight years later, I still feel like we’re tweaking our process and improving how we handle our customers.”
But good customer feedback isn’t all about growth. It’s also an important part of boosting team morale.
“I think the biggest impact is internally,” says Michael, “We have a Friday morning breakfast with our whole team every week. And when we get reviews, we read them during breakfast, and we go around and do high fives,” he explains, “You’ve got folks in accounting who never interact with customers. You’ve got guys in the field doing the installation who may not have heard what the customer thinks. And so being able to read that to your team, high five when you win, it just reminds everyone that we’re doing this together, we’re making an impact, and here’s feedback from a real customer telling us that. It makes an impact on the whole team.”
Similarly, Skura and other leaders at Valdicass use information from GuildQuality surveys to inform one-on-one coaching sessions with their employees. Having fresh, direct customer feedback makes these sessions incredibly powerful and productive. The result is a better, more highly skilled team.
Finding New Leads
GuildQuality doesn’t just help the Krueger Brothers, Valdicass, and countless others to improve their business. It helps them find new leads as well.
“We’ve seen our SEO grow from reviews. We’re at 157 Google reviews and have 4.7 stars, which is great. We’ve seen more reviews on our Better Business Bureau page,” says Michael. “All of this helps us to find new business and continue to grow.”
It also gives Skura and his team the insight to have follow-up conversations with customers.
“When a customer isn’t expecting it, and we call them up and say thank you for pointing out ways we can improve our process and that their feedback was super valuable, it just blows them away,” says Skura, “they’re like wow my review did matter!”
Skura says these follow-up calls often result in additional jobs, whether with the same customer or through a referral. The customer appreciates being heard, especially after paying for the work. It’s an easy way to demonstrate valuable extra effort.
“They don’t owe us anything. We don’t owe them anything. And then you call them and make that human interaction. It’s not expected. It goes a long way,” says Skura.
“Homeowners that come to us after reading about us on GuildQuality come in with an expectation. They know that they’re going to receive a positive experience from us,” says Skura, “So I think that we’re bringing in a better crowd. They’re just a little more ready to sign the contract.”
Today, Valdicass is closing about 50% more jobs year over year, a factor Skura directly attributes to being a GuildQuality member.