5+ Tips To Getting More Reviews

Research indicates that reviews influence nearly 82 percent of consumer purchases. That means four-fifths of people who need your services look at what others have said about you before they decide to invite you into their homes.

Reviews present consumers with an independent source of information:

• Can they trust you?
• Do you provide quality work?
• Can they be confident in your ability to solve their problem?

Reviews can also help new customers find you. Continually adding fresh content, such as reviews, to your website helps increase your search engine positioning. Being found more easily results in more leads.

Since reviews help you earn you new customers, the question becomes – are you getting enough to earn new business? If you need more reviews, incorporate these five tips into your workday.

1. 1. Tell customers their feedback is important
   2. Make it easy for them to provide a review
   3. Send them a review request immediately
   4. Help them feel at ease about their feedback
   5. Send them a reminder email

Bonus Tip: Customer Service is the foundation to being worthy of a review

1. Tell customers their feedback is important

Encourage feedback! If you leave a job without asking for a review, the customer has no idea his feedback is important. Ask her for a review before you leave and, as you’ll learn below, give her an easy way for them to provide it to you.

Not only will the simple “ask” increase the likelihood that you’ll get a review; being proactive allows you to choose a tool that enables the content to directly benefit your site, not an outside review site.

2. Make it easy for them to provide a review

Tell your customer exactly what you’d like her to do and how. Send her a link to your survey via email or SMS. She opens the link, completes the questions and hits submit. That’s it. She doesn’t have to go through the effort to find your business’s pages on Yelp or Google+.

If you make it easy, you’re likely to get a review that will benefit your business’s growth strategy. In fact, this can increase the % of completions from as little as 5 percent to as much as 30 percent or more.

3. Send them a review request immediately

After you complete a job, the sooner you ask for a review, the more likely you are to end up with one. Text or email the customer a review link from your phone before you even leave his driveway; better yet while you’re still at the kitchen table reviewing your work, while the job is still fresh in his mind. Do it before she moves on to other activities and forgets about the quality of your work.

4. Help them feel at ease about their feedback

When you ask for the review, tell the customer you want to ensure you’re performing up to her expectations. If you haven’t earned four or five stars, she should feel comfortable to share ways you can improve. But if you have done a good job, tell her that her comments will help others learn about the quality of your work.

Your goal is to make the customer feel at ease with being honest in their reviews. Your candor will take the edge off of any negative feelings she may have had. This will increase the likelihood that you will walk away with a more positive review. It will also significantly reduce the likelihood of getting a negative review, especially one by surprise.

5. Send them a reminder email

The first four tips should result in a new review. But if the customer still hasn’t provided feedback, try following up. Send an email or text a few days or a week later as a simple, no-pressure reminder.

It’s not a good idea to harass a former customer for a review, so if this reminder doesn’t earn you a review, rest assured that your efforts will earn results from your next customer.

Bonus Tip: Customer Service is the foundation to being worthy of a review

This isn’t a customer service article. But common customer service practices apply and serve as the foundation to being worthy of a review. Show up on time; Be responsive to customer needs; Be great every time.

When you develop goodwill and make a positive impression, the customer will likely write a review. If you make a negative impression—you were late, sloppy, didn’t do the work properly—the customer may write a negative review.

But if you give the customer a positive experience—you were kind, showed up on time, were respectful, performed the work well—the customer will translate your good will into a great review.