Customer Review Management for Carpet Cleaners.

No matter what businesses we’re talking about, you need a positive reputation on multiple platforms to properly secure your brand’s integrity.

You may have the best carpet cleaning business in your area, but that doesn’t mean competitors have other techniques to land more sales than just great service. When you fail to uphold your reputation, you could be missing out on a ton of sales to your competitors.

The name of the game is online Review Management. You may think it’s silly that a carpet cleaning service needs to rely on online reviews for success, but it’s true. You may associate the importance of online reviews with the product or service-based industries like restaurants and hotels, but every single way of commerce relies on it to keep a good name.

The numbers don’t lie. Research suggests that 93% of consumers’ purchasing decisions are impacted by online reviews. With so much emphasis placed on how your previous customers perceive you online, review management is crucial in the process of your digital marketing strategy.

Yes, your carpet cleaning business is active in the real world. You’re actually servicing customers’ houses rather than consulting remotely. However, you can’t escape your virtual reputation when it comes to your real-world business.

Online review management is not as daunting as it sounds. Getting started is as easy as reading through this article.

Welcome to review management 101!

What Is Review Management?

To understand the importance of online review management, you should know what it really amounts to.

If your carpet cleaning company has little to no online presence, there will still be traces of it throughout the internet! Customers utilize various third-party platforms like Facebook, Google My Business, Twitter, and Yelp to voice their opinion about a service. Additionally, you may already have a Google My Business account set up for your carpet cleaning outfit!

Managing reviews online encompasses generating, monitoring, and responding to them. Doing so will show a rise in credibility with potential customers.

Here are the ways online reviews affect your carpet cleaning business:

Awareness: The more positive reviews (and reviews in general) your company gets, the more your carpet cleaning business will appear on relevant searches.
Trustworthiness: Installing a new carpet isn’t simple, nor is it cheap. When a customer chooses your service, they need to know they can trust you. The best way to establish trust with potential customers is a big sample size of reviews.
Credibility: High overall reviews your carpet cleaning company can generate will help the credibility of your service immensely.

As you may already know, search engine optimization (SEO) is the number one most sought-after digital marketing technique in today’s modern age. With that being said, online review management is a crucial facet of great SEO!

SEO tactics are all about adhering to Google’s algorithm. Well, this algorithm loves content. Luckily, great online reviews count as the content!

How Does Review Management Work?

Now that you know what online review management is, you wish every satisfied customer you service will hop online and leave a glowing review to help with a digital marketing strategy. Some previous customers will voice their opinion and sing your graces on social media, but not as much as you would like.

To make these opinions work for you, you’re going to have to find ways to generate more reviews.

Generating Online Reviews

The first step in starting effective online reviews management is to drum up more reviews from customers.

When generating more online reviews, keep these effective methods and techniques in mind:

Make submitting a review as easy as possible on your website.
Show off reviews about your service on your website by adding a “reviews” page.
Send a personalized message to a recently satisfied customer requesting them to leave a review on other third-party platforms such as Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp.
Contact customers directly through email or social media, encouraging customers to leave a review on your website.

When you generate more online reviews, you will see a diversity of thoughts and opinions that will help you fine-tune your service while giving you an edge in relevant online searches!

Monitoring Online Reviews

Now that you have more reviews flowing in, it’s time to keep track of them! It’s best to check for reviews daily, weekly at the most. Be sure to utilize online review monitoring tools like Google Alerts and other third-party applications.

Additionally, if you want to see a decrease in negative reviews and garner more positive ones, consider using professional Review Management Software that will give you 24/7 monitoring on your reviews so you can respond to them instantly.

Responding to Online Reviews

Now that you have reviews rolling and a way to keep track of them, it’s time to formulate the proper response for both positive and negative ones.

Let’s face it: It’s impossible for any business to satisfy 100% of their clients. Even if you provide top-notch service every time, there will always be at least one negative Nancy out there that finds a problem with their experience.

For positive reviews, it’s best to show gratitude and thank the customer for taking the time to write a positive message. When it comes to negative reviews, it’s best to take a slightly different approach.

Here are some guidelines to following when responding to a negative review online:

Thank them for the feedback.
Apologize for their negative experience.
Speak with the unhappy customer on a more personal form of communication such as email or phone.
Ask if there is anything your business can do for that customer to achieve satisfaction.
Advocate for a solution rather than making excuses.

Every single word said about your carpet cleaning business won’t be positive but, knowing how to properly respond to negative reviews will help sway some of them in a brighter light.