When your plumbing business recieves a negative review on Yelp, Google My Business, or any home service directory, it can seem like the end of the world. But, this doesn’t mean you need to panic.
Being strategic about how handle your reviews — a practice called reputation management — can help you leverage your good and bad feedback to benefit your business, now and in the future.
Here are some steps you can take to limit the damage caused by bad reviews:
1. Make Sure You Are Listed on All Relevant Online Directories
The first step to managing your online reputation is to ensure that you have a reputation to manage. Every day, countless people access companies’ Yelp pages, Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business), and listings on other directories like Angi (formerly Angie’s List.)
Make sure your profiles are all claimed and up-to-date in order to start gathering reviews. This is important because potential customers aren’t just affected by good and bad reviews — the recency and volume of reviews is a factor they will consider when deciding whether or not to trust a nearby business.
2. Make Sure You Acknowledge Every Review — Good or Bad
Reputation management for small businesses is extremely important. Good reviews can boost your reputation, and bad reviews can have the opposite effect: 86% of people who stop doing business with a company do so because of a bad experience.
But this doesn’t mean your online reviews are black and white. Every good experience can be highlighted for additional reputational value, and every bad experience can be addressed. That’s why it’s important to respond to every review — thank the positive reviewers and address the concerns of the negative reviewers.
3. Respond to Reviews Quickly
When you go about addressing your negative reviews, a prompt response can offer an opportunity to change the person who left the review’s overall sentiment about your plumbing business. To illustrate the reason why this is critical, you can think about two separate scenarios.
Scenario 1:
A customer has a negative experience with your plumbing business and leaves a bad review. The review receives a response a month later, but by that point, they’ve already reinforced their reasons not to do business with you again.
Scenario 2:
In the same situation, your business responds to the negative review within 24 hours of its posting. The customer is satisfied with the resolution you offered and leaves the interaction feeling positive about your ability to deliver the service you’re advertising.
In some cases, the customer in Scenario 2 will even remove or revise their review, provided that the platform allows them to do so. And, even if they don’t do this, prospective customers are watching the way you deal with negative customer interactions — this can be a major factor in their decision to do business with you going forward.
Reputation Pro Can Be Complex
To develop and maintain your reputation in a crowded market, you need to keep an eye on your reviews — everywhere — practically at all times, as well as developing a consistent strategy to get new reviews. iZone Marketing can help.
We’re a reputation management agency that specializes in helping small business grow and maintain a high reputation in their local markets. Would your plumbing company benefit from leaving the hard parts to us and freeing up time to focus on what you do best? Schedule a reputation management consultation with our experts to get started.