By Victor Imgarten of Clean Sweep Chimney Service
I founded Clean Sweep Chimney Service in 1977 and we are still proud to be family owned with the first and only owner working in the field to ensure the best service the industry has to offer. Over the years, I have seen great value in customer reviews. We often get service calls based on the reputation that we have developed in real life and online. People trust their neighbors when they take the time to write a review on Yelp, Facebook or Google. We would like to share with other business owners what we have learned over the years and how important our customers and their feedback are to us.
Online reviews of small businesses have changed the way your customers are discovering services and making purchasing decisions. If your company is who your customers say it is, then these online reviews play a crucial part in giving them that voice. It’s so important to start managing online reviews well and learn how to not only keep them coming in but how to respond to them.
Online reviews often act as short and timely customer testimonials. Reviews can help with search engine rankings and work to establish trust and brand recognition for your company. You need to be managing online reviews for your business so that you can be seen and trusted.
Here are 4 Beginner Steps for Managing Online Reviews
1.Make all Employees Ambassadors
All your employees should be ambassadors for customer reviews! Ask your employees to tell clients to leave a review of their work. Most satisfied customers won’t take the time to post a review unless you specifically ask them to. This not only lets the client know you care about the quality of your work and is willing to have your customer share their opinion publicly, but it creates a connection to your customer. In turn, you will hopefully get more reviews, honest feedback and returning customers.
2. Make the Process Simple
Make it easy by signing up for an online service that automatically emails your customers to request they submit a review. Or simply let your customers know you are on Yelp or remind them that you have profiles on Google and Facebook, where they can leave a review. This simple technique has proven to quickly increase the number of reviews you can generate. These services can link to your customer database so you know the reviews are from your actual clients and customers.
3. Respond to All Reviews, Even the Negative Ones
Create a policy for responding to negative reviews with everyone in your company and designate one person to act as the spokesperson in these situations. When a negative review appears, respond in a timely fashion. Acknowledge their dissatisfaction publicly and describe how you plan to resolve the cause of it and that you will contact them directly. Follow up by directly reaching out to the concerned customer.
Customers will naturally gravitate to businesses that display a human element and interaction.
4. Thank Your Reviewers
Publicly thank anyone who gives you a review. This shows your customers that you appreciate them and are noticing their feedback. This is actually one of the most important steps to getting a customer to return.
As a service oriented company, we at Clean Sweep St. Louis love getting feedback from customers and have found managing online reviews to be very significant for us. We have implemented these four steps at Clean Sweep with our team. We hope what has worked for us will also help you!
About Clean Sweep Services: Clean Sweep continues to lead the way in the field of chimney safety. We are proud of our past and are no strangers to being first and leading the way for the industry and homeowners. We were first in the state to offer internal video chimney inspections, the first to offer European chimney lining and sweeping methods and the first to offer power sweeping of chimney systems. We continue to look for new and innovative products and services to improve and simplify our customer’s lives and make your home and the earth a safer and more efficient place for all.
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