One-star online reviews are the worst.
Even when they’re unwarranted, they drag down your reputation, make you appear untrustworthy, and can cost you a ton of business.
That’s why I’m going to tell you about a brilliant tactic one of our clients use to turn one-star reviews into five-star reviews… within 60 minutes of the review being posted.
This is a method you can immediately start implementing in your own business, so be sure you read this entire email.
The client is Service Champions, an HVAC company in Orange County, CA. When I talk about monopolizing your marketplace, Service Champions is literally doing it:
- Revenue over $30 million per year
- Almost 200 employees
- Over 100 service trucks
- Tens of thousands of customers
On top of that, they maintain an astonishingly high 4.5 out of 5 rating on Yelp with almost 600 reviews.
As of this writing, Service Champions has 582 reviews and a 4.5 rating on Yelp.
Now, most companies would be happy with satisfying literally 99.9% of their customers. Not so with Service Champions. They give each and every one-star review from Yelp the Code Red treatment.
The company fastidiously monitors their Yelp reviews. When a one-star review comes in, an email immediately notifies marketing director Katey Becker. Within 30 seconds, she contacts owner Leland Smith, who drops WHATEVER he’s doing to troubleshoot the complaint.
In minutes, Katey and Leland have a conference call with the involved employees to discuss the situation. They don’t try to “build a case” to prove the customer is wrong or that the employees screwed up; they just want everyone’s perspective on what happened.
Within an hour of the one-star review being posted, Leland personally calls the customer to discuss why they were unsatisfied. He intently listens to their complaint and asks them what they need to see happen to make them happy. It doesn’t matter what it is—he’ll do ANYTHING.
One customer was mad because he was paying $12,000 for a new HVAC system and received a quote from a different company after the fact for $6,000. Leland told the customer to pay whatever he thought was fair. The customer paid $6,000.
Another customer was so impressed by the act of Leland calling that he changed his one-star review to a five-star review on the spot.
To further foster their “five-star” culture, Service Champions has a company meeting with all employees to recognize who got the highest reviews for the previous month. The company reads the five-star reviews out loud, brags about the technicians involved, and pays them a cash bonus.
Because of their methods, Service Champions converts about 80% of one-star reviews to five-star reviews. The 20% they can’t convert are typically people who won’t return the company’s repeated phone calls.
Look, you may not be able to sacrifice $6K for a five-star review or give employee bonuses like Service Champions. But that’s okay. If you follow the general blueprint above, you can also turn one-star reviews to five-star reviews.
When a one-star review comes your way, talk to the employees involved. Call the customer to discuss why they’re unhappy and what you can do to make it right.
You’ll often find an angry customer is so floored you took the time to call that they quickly turn into your next gushing groupie.
Trust me, maintaining a good online reputation is vital to your business. Studies have shown that just a one-star rating increase on review websites like Yelp can increase business by 5% to 9%.
That’s a lot of extra cash you could be bringing in for a small amount of effort. So get to it!
-Rich
P.S. Want to know how much money your online reviews are leaving on the table? Let us perform a free, no-strings in-depth audit of your online reputation. We’ll show you EXACTLY what you need to do to beef up your review scores to start making more money.
We’re offering this service to MYM email subscribers until 6/31/16. After that, it pulls a Jimmy Hoffa and vanishes forever. Email us to get started.
© 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.
