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Plugging leaks in a client’s approach to requesting customer reviews.

Quick Facts

Industry

Home Service

Niche

Cleaning Service

Locations

2

Cities Served

30+

About The Client

Our client is an established cleaning service provider, offering both residential and commercial services throughout a large service area. With 2 active locations in large cities, they’ve completed thousands of jobs over the decade they’ve been in business.

The Situation

Despite overwhelmingly happy customers, our client struggled to consistently generate online reviews. Although they frequently asked, their success rate was extremely low. In fact, many customers agreed to leave reviews, but never followed through.

With reviews playing such a pivotal role in search placement, our client was in serious need of overhauling their approach.

Observations

  • Very few of their review pitches took place online. While they’d previously mailed out written requests with gift cards, most requests were over the phone.
  • Their main method of acquiring customer feedback was a phone call. If customers relayed a great experience, staff would politely request a review on the phone.
  • They seemed to only request Yelp reviews, ignoring other extremely valuable platforms. From 2009 to the end of 2013, they’d only managed to obtain 1 Google review.
  • When reviews were requested through email, there was often a large gap in time between the review request and the customer’s last response.

Strategy Hypothesis

After reviewing their existing strategy, I felt reasonable concluding the following:

  • Far too many opportunities are squandered by asking for reviews over the phone. There’s simply too much that can distract a customer after the request. Since reviews are an online thing, you should request your reviews online as well.
  • Similarly, it’s doubly beneficial to request reviews when they’re actually online. A fresh email exchange with a happy client is an excellent opportunity. Remember: the longer the gap between dialog, the lower the chances of success.
  • It’s a mistake to hyper-focus your pitches to 1 platform across the board (even if you need them). Instead, consider what you know about the customer, and request reviews for site(s) that’d be easiest on them.
  • Since Yelp requires registration to post, you’re likely SOL if customers aren’t active Yelpers. If you’re unsure, diversify by providing backup alternatives to increase your chances of success.

What Was Done

Shifting to an email-only approach, I tested various outreach methods over the next few months, including direct requests, traditional email campaigns, and sending requests through existing correspondence, etc.

Experimenting with many different tones and personas helped me get a better understanding of the client base. By assessing the response to each pitch, I began to whittle down and optimize our overall strategy.

Specific Strategies Used: 

  • Casually requested reviews in the middle of natural email correspondence when customer was active online.
  • Analyzed CRM data to determine the optimal platform to request a review on for each customer.
  • Exported time-stamps on email correspondence to segment clients by their most active time of day.

Note: To quickly gather data, I contacted multiple past customers at once instead of targeting new clients 1-by-1 after their cleaning. The average time between their first cleaning and my email was 8.5 months. Many were no longer clients. Suffice to say, these leads were far from optimal.

Results

150
Reviews Requested
36
Reviews Achieved
24%
Success Rate
100%
5-Star Reviews

After a handful of different campaigns, I amassed 36 perfect 5-star reviews in a short period of time. With a 24% success rate, the email-based approach crushed their previous strategy of requesting reviews by phone.

It’s also worth noting that many of the 150 requests were to “past customers.” Moving forward, our client should expect an even better return when targeting their fresh or existing customers with our new approach.

Are you ready to get the 5-star reviews your competitors have?

If you’re interested in developing a strategy for generating online reviews, complete the form below to schedule a free consultation.

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