Guildmaster Awards

Guildmaster Qualifications

The Guildmaster Awards are open to all active GuildQuality members. To determine which members qualify for the award, we consider two metrics that we believe allow us to confidently recognize the top performers: customer recommendation rate and survey response rate. Although we open the award in Q4 of the current year and close it in Q2 the following year, we use customer feedback from the entire calendar year. For example, the 2025 Guildmaster Award opens in November 2024 and closes in Q2 2025, and we’ll look at customer data spanning between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024, to determine who qualifies.

Additionally, this year’s Guildmaster Award introduces a new qualification rule regarding response rate!

Minimum recommendation rate

The primary requirement for receiving a Guildmaster Award is exemplary customer service, as demonstrated by an extremely high customer recommendation rate. The average customer recommendation rate in the residential construction industry is approximately 70%. To receive a Guildmaster Award, a member must achieve a 'Likely to Recommend' rate of 90% or greater.

Number of survey responses reviewed

To determine whether or not a member qualifies for a Guildmaster Award, GuildQuality also reviews survey feedback received from all customers who were sent a survey in the previous calendar year. If that number equates to less than 20 survey responses, GuildQuality includes older responses, as well. Under no circumstances are GuildQuality members who have fewer than 20 survey responses eligible for the Guildmaster Award.

Submission requirements and minimum response rate

In addition to the above criteria for recommendation rate and surveys sent, GuildQuality also requires that members meet at least one of the following criteria:

Levels of Distinction

To encourage the highest level of customer service, GuildQuality offers two levels of distinction in addition to the baseline Guildmaster Award. Members who receive a recommendation rate between 95.0% and 97.9% receive Guidmaster with Distinction. Members who receive a recommendation rate between 98.0% and 100% receive Guildmaster with Highest Distinction.

Active GuildQuality members only

To be eligible for the annual Guildmaster award, a company must be a GuildQuality member in good standing between the qualification start date and the public review end date. Although companies whose memberships have lapsed may continue to promote their status as Guildmaster Award winners, their website badges will no longer render correctly, and they will not be promoted on the GuildQuality website.

Applying for the Guildmaster Award

For a GuildQuality member to be considered for the upcoming Guildmaster Award, they must verify that they survey all of their customers. If they have not submitted a complete and unabridged list of customers to GuildQuality by the end of the current year (excluding exceptions - see below for details), they will not be considered.

Exceptions

Although GuildQuality requires members to survey all of their customers, there are, at times, exceptions to this rule. For example, a condominium developer who also owns apartment buildings may choose to exclude the apartment residents from his or her surveys.

In other cases, a GuildQuality member may survey the same customer multiple times. For example, they may survey a homeowner at the end of a remodeling project as well as six months later. For the purposes of calculating these awards, GuildQuality considers survey volume rather than customer volume. As such, unless submitted as an exception, some Guildmaster Award winners may receive their award based on multiple surveys from the same customers.

If a Guildmember does exclude one or more customers from their surveys, they are required to disclose those exceptions/omissions at the start of the award qualification process. GuildQuality reserves the right to reject any or all exceptions submitted.

Customers omitted from surveying

A Guildmember may exclude a specific customer from surveying and retain their Guildmaster eligibility provided the candidate provides GuildQuality with the omitted customer’s project information. In these cases, GuildQuality records a 0 ‘Likely to Recommend’ score on behalf of the omitted customer.

Public review

While it is the responsibility of the GuildQuality member to provide GuildQuality with an unabridged customer list for surveying, GuildQuality relies on the general public to police the completeness of each application.

If GuildQuality determines that a GuildQuality member has purposefully omitted a customer from their survey process (excluding exceptions), GuildQuality may, at its sole discretion, disqualify the candidate, make the member ineligible for future awards, and/or cancel their membership entirely.

Announcing the Guildmaster Award winners

Once a GuildQuality member confirms that they survey all customers (and their list of exceptions, if any, is approved by GuildQuality) GuildQuality will review their survey activity and customer feedback to determine whether or not they qualify, based on the requirements listed above. The qualification process typically begins in January of the current award year and ends at the end of the first quarter. Winners are announced in Q2 of the same year.