I’m going to start doing a little column, or segment on the FreshLime blog where I answer questions that come in for us from readers, business owners, and basically anyone. If you have any small business-related or marketing questions, please send them in! I’d love to get your question answered on the blog. Today, I’m going to start with an awesome question from Rhonda M., in Centennial, CO. Her question is likely one that several business owners have had, so I’m pretty excited about this post.
Rhonda asked…
“I work at a small carpet cleaning company in northern CO and we do a lot of work for move-out rentals. My job is to get people to review our company online but when I ask, not everyone does a review and last week I asked and someone left a bad review, which I feel like I could have avoided by not asking at all. How can I fix this and get more positive reviews? We always do a great job so I’m sure it’s not our work that’s the problem?”
Rhonda, this is a great question! Getting online reviews is HUGE for your business in order to make it grow and thrive, but lots of business owners have this exact same problem. Even when the work is great, many customers don’t even think to leave a review, or they forget that you mentioned it as soon as you leave. It can be really tricky. First of all, you’re on the right track with asking people to leave you a review. I think it’s important when you do this, to first determine the customer’s satisfaction level. You can’t always be sure, but if you know a customer isn’t very happy with the service or if you had some issues with the process, maybe skip asking that one about leaving a review. Instead, you can ask them what you can do next time to make things a little better for them.
I’ll let you in on a little secret though, most people forget to leave you a review, even if they’re totally satisfied, if all you do is ask when you’re still there with them. It’s a great idea to send a follow up text or email to your happy customers an hour or so after you complete the service. Give them a link to your Google or Facebook page so they can easily get to the right spot and leave a quick review. Remember, people won’t do things if they feel like it will take them a long time. Be sure to make it convenient and mention that it will only take a minute or two! Here’s a great format for a text or email like this:
“Hi ___, this is Rhonda from ___. If you had a positive experience today, I would really appreciate if you took a minute to leave me a review here: [link]. If your experience was not so satisfactory, please call me and let me rectify the situation.”
That message will only take a minute for you to write up and I am positive you will see great results! FreshLime has technology to ensure that an email similar to that, with instructions and all will be sent to each of your customers after each service. If you want to know more about this automated service, let me know!
Thanks again, Rhonda, for your great question. I hope this helps!