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Each year, the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc. publishes its list of consumer services with the highest number of requests for background information about individual companies that do everything from clean pools to sell used cars. To be sure, some industry groups appear on this list because those services are in high demand. But it also can reflect the existence of many unscrupulous players, a reality that translates to greater scrutiny when consumers consider buying those services. Most players in that industry, therefore, are often checked out in advance. Remodeling and home improvement falls into that category.

In 2005, four of the top 10 services with the most requested information were related to home improvement and remodeling markets. Combined, they tallied 2.96 million requests for background information from consumers across the U.S. That is why for the second consecutive year Qualified Remodeler magazine partnered with ReNex Inc., parent company of RenovationExperts.com, to survey consumers who have recently worked with remodelers. Our goal was to not only establish a benchmark for overall customer satisfaction in the remodeling market, but also to look behind the raw numbers and uncover the types of business practices that separate the good players from the bad. From this, we were also able to begin to track how the remodeling industry performed year-over-year as it moves toward broader-based levels of customer satisfaction.

This year, the pool of survey respondents were doubled from just over 700 remodeling customers in 2005 to more than 1,500 in 2006. Generally better scores were recorded this year, and in categories ranging from overall satisfaction to price to workmanship, the numbers tracked proportionately with previous results. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best possible level of satisfaction, the aggregate score for “Overall Satisfaction” in 2006 is 6.55 vs. 6.29 a year ago.

The scores also show a fairly strong improvement on the question of “Timeliness.” This year, remodelers were given an average score of 6.23 vs. 5.75 in 2005. The increase in this category is significant in that, for the second straight year, our analysis shows that timeliness is the No. 1 determinant of customer satisfaction. When remodelers met their deadlines and finished projects on time their corresponding scores in all other categories of satisfaction also rose. Conversely, “Price” is somewhat surprisingly inelastic. The statistics show that price is not a major source of dissatisfaction, tallying the highest average scores of 6.81 this year and 6.76 a year ago. (See the “Year-over-Year” chart.)

Two opposite directions

With an estimated $275 billion in annual spending on professional home improvement services, a lot of work is clearly getting done on budget, on time and with high quality workmanship to the ultimate satisfaction of millions of Americans who are undoubtedly pleased with their remodeling contractors. But perhaps the single clearest result of the analysis of the RenovationExperts.com and Qualified Remodeler survey is the picture it paints of a polarized remodeling world. At one axis you have fully professional remodeling firms. And at the other axis there are thousands of fly-by-night contractors whose low-ball pricing opens doors, but whose resulting poor work, endless delays, and financial shortcuts give credence to a poor industry reputation.