Like 92% of the population, I read online reviews about something before I consider buying it.
This especially goes for big-ticket items like remodels, vacations, and vehicles.
So when I wanted to take my wife to a Cancun resort last year, I went to TripAdvisor to scope the online reviews of the different establishments.
Now…
When I plan vacations like this, I only consider resorts with at least an 80% (four out of five stars) rating. I’m spending a big chunk of change, and I want my money’s worth.
So I found a beach-side resort that ticked all the boxes I wanted: fun stuff to do, exotic location, all-inclusive, and the necessary rating I require (it had four stars with over 2,000 reviews).
I booked the resort two months in advance and went on my merry way.
Flash-Forward Two Months…
We arrive at the lush tropical resort, ready to relax and have fun.
But turns out that, within those two months in which I booked the trip and when we arrived, the resort began a MAJOR construction project.
In the words of Homer Simpson… D’OH!
Instead of being greeted by the soothing sounds of ocean waves crashing onto the beach, we were met with the obnoxious, ear-splitting cacophony of jackhammers crunching into concrete.
Instead of breathing in the salty sea air, I sucked up two lungful’s worth of construction dust every time I inhaled.
Instead of opening the window shades in my room to experience the beautiful tropical view, I had a construction worker’s butt crack staring back at me.
Twice.
By the end of the trip, I looked something like this:
The point?
If I had looked at the resort’s reviews within those two months, I would have seen a ton of new reviews complaining about the construction. And I would have canceled and booked a different resort. But I didn’t.
Oh, well. Live and learn.
Here’s what YOU can learn from my excruciating excursion.
Like the vacation industry, home improvement is a fluid business. CURRENT reviews are critical.
When I looked at the resort’s TripAdvisor page yesterday, the reviews painted an entirely different picture from when I booked it over a year ago.
Sure, some people are still giving it good reviews (they must have been far, far away from the construction site). But many of them now mention the STILL ongoing construction as a turn-off.
This leads me to a few questions for you…
Are there any companies you compete against that were good last year… or the year before… that are now terrible? And would their reviews tell that story?
Odds are, you do.
And trust me when I say people ALWAYS put more stock into current reviews than old ones.
If prospects see that a contractor has negative recent reviews, they’re going to look for someone else—period. Those shiny five-star reviews from one or two years ago won’t help.
But if you have a bunch of great reviews consistently pouring in, it can work wonders for your business.
That’s where ORM comes in.
With ORM, the good reviews pour in fast and furious… while helping to prevent any negative ones from being posted for all the World Wide Web to see.
Find out more on our ORM webpage. (Also, make sure you use our free Online Review Scanner for an instant snapshot of your online reputation across multiple review websites.)
P.S. Okay, our Cancun trip wasn’t ALL bad. Besides the resort construction, it was actually pretty great. We visited the Mayan ruins in the ancient city of Coba and did a cenote tour of the local underground caves and lakes. I don’t have the pictures on my computer, but here are a few photos I found online of the Coba ruins we saw:
Mayan Pyramid
Mayan Lighthouse
Stone Pyramid
© 2017, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.
