This past year, my wife and I bought most of our Christmas gifts online. One night, we were lying in bed, looking for presents. At one point, I turned my iPad toward her and showed her a picture of something I thought would be a great gift. She said, “That looks nice, but what do the reviews say?” This scene played out over and over for weeks. If an item didn’t have good reviews, we didn’t buy it.
Online reviews are a huge part of my electrical service company. They’re so important to me I’ve hired someone to manage our online reputation. Take a look at some statistics from the blog post “12 Statistics On Consumer Reviews,” by Bob Nunn, to see how reviews can influence potential customers.
• 90% of online consumers trust recommendations from people they know, 70% trust unknown users, 27% trust experts, and 14% trust advertising.
• 70% consult reviews or ratings before purchasing.
• 34% have turned to social media to air their feelings about a company.
• 7 in 10 people who read reviews share them with friends, family, and colleagues, amplifying their impact.
Dealing with negative reviews
Nothing ruins your day faster than a negative review. It’s like a knife in the gut.
First, here’s what not to do:
• Don’t fire back an emotional reply. I’ve done that. And oh, did it feel good — for a few minutes. After I cooled down and re-read my reply, I was horrified that some of my potential clients had seen my harsh rebuke to that negative review.
• Don’t jump to conclusions. Gather the facts, and discuss the situation with your employees. Often, the customer who wrote the negative review was in an emotional state and may not have all the facts straight.
Related
Here are two things you should do when dealing with negative reviews:
1. Immediately implement a system to handle negative reviews. Make it one person’s responsibility to check online reviews daily. Respond to every review promptly.
2. Track your progress. A wise man once told me, “What gets measured gets improved.” Set a goal with your team on where you want your star rating to be, and then put a date on it.
Add positive reviews daily
If someone is unhappy with the service you provided, there’s a higher chance they’ll write a negative review compared to a satisfied customer writing a positive one.
Be intentional about adding positive reviews. Part of our weekly training is dedicated to going over positive and negative reviews. We praise the positive reviews, and learn from the negative ones. We’ve also built a competitive culture. We always have some sort of competition going on in our office, and each of those competitions contains a category to earn points/prizes/money for Google reviews.
Here’s how we train our team members to get the positive reviews:
1. Ask your customers if they are an Android or IOS user. Android phones have the Google Maps app pre-installed. If they are an iPhone user, find out if they have the Google Maps app installed on their phone. If the customer doesn’t have the app, ask them if they’d be willing to download it while the tech is at the job.
2. If the customer agrees to download the Google Maps app onto their phone (or realizes they already have it), have them open it and locate your business.
3. Ask the customer to scroll down on your page until they see the 5 stars and the review portion of the screen.
4. Ask them to write a 5-star review.
5. They will be taken to the Google Logon screen when they click on that star. If they have a Google account or anything tied to Google, they must sign on with their username and password.
6. Once the review is finished, it will be published on your Google Plus page.
Hagan is a second-generation electrician. He owns and operates the Mister Sparky locations serving Northwest Arkansas, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, Okla. He oversees a staff of 30, which includes electricians and technicians. He can be reached at [email protected].
