Review Overdose: Are Google Ratings Running Your Business?

One of my clients asked me a great question, “Are we relying too much on Google reviews?

If you’re running a restoration business or any home service business, you know the goldmine customer reviews can be - especially Google reviews. 

If you don’t know who I am, I’m Scott Miller, the owner of thegrowthleague.com. I’m creating these videos to assist restoration business owners in maximizing profits, reducing chaos, and creating valuable assets they can sell when the time is right. I encourage you to take action after watching this video, even if it’s just scheduling a call with me to talk about how I might be able to help you.

Back to my client’s question - after he asked me, I had six immediate thoughts - here’s where my mind went:

1. Impact of Reviews: How significant are online reviews for businesses in the restoration industry?

Huge - Every week, clients tell me stories about getting jobs as a direct result of Google reviews. In many cases, they are getting new repeat business/new referral sources because of their Google reviews.

What’s your Review Strategy? Are businesses proactive about asking satisfied customers for reviews, or is it more of a passive situation?

• What are you doing to generate reviews?  Sending an email once the job is completed with a link to make it easy?
• QR code presented by the person who does the final walkthrough with the property owner?
• A phone call to request the review
• Copy/paste of review they left at another site where you ask them to also leave the review on Google
• An incentive for your team to get reviews from clients
• What else am I not thinking about???

What about Customer Engagement And Damage Control? Is there a strategy in place for responding to negative reviews in a way that could mitigate the damage?

• A 24-hour phone call to get feedback and a rating of their satisfaction with your initial response
• A procedure you follow to ensure regular contact with the customer throughout the life of the job - especially important with a rebuild job because of the length of this type of job.
• If all else fails - you got a bad review (anything less than a 5), now what? Pick up the phone and call your customer.

What about the Metrics? Are there other KPIs that businesses use to gauge the success of a job well done, apart from reviews?

• Time to start work
• Time to completion
• Frequency of customer updates

2. Review vs. Referral: What percentage of business comes from reviews versus other sources like referrals or organic search?

If you’re not tracking this, you should start.  If you’re using a CRM, it’s easy to do - just be sure you’re entering information in the referral source field.

3. Diversification: I'm a huge fan of diversification when it comes to referral sources. Aside from relying on your Google reviews to generate leads, what else are you doing? Diversify your lead sources by getting intentional about getting work from some or all of the sources below. This is what I coach sales reps and owners in in my Restoration Sales Academy groups.

• Agents

• Adjusters

• Property Managers

• Commercial Property Owners

• Plumbers

• Third-Party Administrators

• Focus on specific verticals

1. Schools

2. Churches

3. Condo Buildings

4. Hospital Systems

5. Assisted Living Facilities

6. Police/Ambulance/Fire

If you have any questions about the usefulness of Google reviews, how you can get more and better reviews, or just business in general, please reach out to me by phone or email. I would be delighted to serve as your resource for all of your business restoration needs.