Nothing is more disheartening than seeing a bad customer review posted on your roofing company’s website or external review site. A bad review has the possibility to be enormously damaging to your roofing business, especially since referrals and reviews are huge sources of new customers.
A bad customer review doesn’t have to be the end of the world.
By responding positively to bad reviews, learning from them, and improving your online reputation, you can turn a bad review into an asset. Here are some roofing marketing tips that can help you make the most of negative reviews.
Step 1: Respond Positively
One of the most important steps to take in the wake of a bad customer review is to respond to it quickly. In fact, try and respond within the hour if possible. Responding this quickly not only shows you are concerned with your customers’ satisfaction, but also keeps you from appearing like your business is ignoring negative feedback. The best roofing customer service is prompt and attuned to your customers’ needs.
When you do respond, be sure to write with empathy. Let the customer know how you are sorry for their bad experience and, if their complaint is something that can be solved reasonably, how you will go about remedying it. Writing more than just “We are sorry for the inconvenience” shows the customer that you actually do care about them and the quality of work you present.
Offering some kind of compensation, like a coupon, discount, or a special deal, can also do wonders to appease a frustrated customer and show them you are interested in amending their bad experience.
Not every situation calls for this kind of compensation, but in certain circumstances, it can be an effective strategy for satisfying and retaining customers. Doing these things not only shows the customer you care about them, it can also earn you a reputation for great roofing customer service. This is an important quality when attracting new customers, who will be looking to see how you would respond if something goes wrong with work on their project. Of course, this type of customer service is only possible when you have the time and availability to look beyond your basic tasks and pay attention to the overall health of your reputation—something the right software can help you with.
Step 2: Learn From It
Responding well to a poor review is just the first step. Once you’ve received the negative feedback, it’s time to use it as a learning experience. The occasional bad fit or hard-to-please customer happens with every business, but if you start noticing multiple reviews referencing the same issues, it likely indicates a pattern—which means it is time to take a look into the problem.
Customers leave reviews for a reason—to let others know the strengths and weaknesses of a company. While these reviews can be damaging to your reputation if not handled in the correct way, they can also be useful because they help you identify what issues you need to address. If you receive multiple bad reviews that reference the same issues, be sure to dedicate resources to fixing those issues. Not only will this likely reduce your bad reviews, it will improve your customer service overall.
What problems arose for your customers? It’s important to identify what you could change in order to reduce the risk of those problems recurring. For instance, if customer instructions got missed during the process, you might consider investing in a tool that helps improve your communication. If your work cost the customer much more than you quoted them, it might be time to improve the way you estimate jobs. Whatever the case, looking at bad reviews as a learning opportunity can help you provide better roofing customer service in the future.
Step 3: Improve Your Online Reputation
Aside from remedying bad reviews, there are other steps you can take to improve your online reputation. The first is to ask your customers to leave reviews, especially if you had a good experience with them. While good reviews will not erase the bad ones, they can help give a more complete picture of the work your company does. Encouraging more positive reviews from your customers will help balance out any negative comments that have been left. To help promote the number of people leaving reviews, offer incentives such as coupons or discounts. If you find yourself coming up short on past customers to ask for reviews, you may need to keep more detailed notes on customers that you can easily refer to after the fact. With a roofing software system like AccuLynx, you can take notes on your jobs that are stored in a single cloud-based location, enabling you to find customers that would make great reviewers.
Another way to improve your online reputation is to extend your company’s reach. When you encourage former customers to leave their reviews on a reliable site such as Angie’s List or Yelp, rather than on your website, potential customers will know they can trust you with their business. You can also improve your online reputation by using tools like Google Alerts. These tools notify you when your company is mentioned, allowing you to stay on top of any reviews being posted online and respond quickly if someone leaves a negative review.
A bad customer review can harm your online reputation and turn away customers if not handled properly. However, by responding quickly and positively, learning from the reviews, and working to improve your online reputation, the negative effects of a bad review can be nullified. In fact, you can turn bad reviews into opportunities for better customer service and marketing. With the right techniques, negative reviews don’t have to be disasters for your growing roofing business.
