Online Reviews: The New Currency Under Your Control!

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Anyone who traveled through Europe before the introduction of the Euro may recall the days when each country had its own currency. Prior to this economic union, tourists had wads of foreign cash that didn’t always amount to much.

But the transition to the Euro led to greater international purchasing power for those who held it. Because of the common value of the new currency, more goods and services could be purchased.

Ultimately purchasing power impacts every aspect of economics, from interest rates and stock prices, to spending and prosperity.

What if your business could have financial prosperity regardless of what was happening to the economy? What if you could create your own “currency”?  And what if you could control the value within the four walls of your company?

With online reviews, you can.

Businesses with a frequent, high-volume of positive reviews on influential review sites gain greater value through consumer trust. Because 92% of consumers now read online reviews, positive online reviews will increase the amount of business you do and rates customers are willing to pay.

On the flip side, negative online reviews will decrease the amount of business you do – and will drive more of your customers to your competitors.  

In Stop Marketing, Be Remarkable, ReviewBuzz Founder Mike Montano writes,  “Reviews are the new currency. They will literally make you money . . . Your capital production capability is directly related to your social proof. Whether you like it or not, that reputation is based 99% on what online information is available about your company.”

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Research shows that online reviews can actually boost ROI for your business. In fact, according to Vision Critical, 80% of people will not buy from a business that has negative reviews, and it takes 10 to 12 positive reviews to offset a single bad one.

So, more than ever before, people are reading reviews and are making fast decisions based on a company’s online reputation.

Studies by social analytics firm, ShareThis, found that people were even willing to pay more for products with positive online reviews.

“Recommendations have more of an impact than brand or price,” says ShareThis CEO Kurt Abrahamson. “We found that highly positive online shares can generate an almost 10 percent increase in purchase intent, and negative reviews can also have a correspondingly negative impact, by 11 percent.”

For residential service providers, the impact is even more profound. A study by Software Advice found that 86% of consumers are willing to pay higher fees for a service provider with positive reviews.

Because positive online reviews have so much power to make you money, they are now considered a new form of currency. The more you have, the more you’ll be making.

If your company is not maximizing your online review potential, you are hurting your own economy.

You can control the amount of positive reviews you get far more than you may think.

 

Here are a few simple steps to build credibility:

  • First, ask your customer to write a review after the service is complete. This should be mandatory of all employees. The best way to get the most reviews is to either ask in person, or by email. 
  • Second, give your employees an incentive to ask for reviews, such as gift cards, etc. 
  • Third, make the review process as simple and easy as possible for your customers. 
  • Fourth, focus on the sites that your customers trust the most and therefore, visit the most, like Google, Facebook, Yelp, BBB, etc. 
  • Fifth, keep reviews current. According to a 2015 Brightlocal survey, 44% of consumers say a review must be written within 1 month to be relevant.

 

When a company looks good online, more people will call, more services will be sold, and more money will be earned. It’s a currency you can manage like any other.

As Montano states, “Great reviews do more than just improve your marketing efforts or your advertisement copy. They make your phone ring. They make you money because your customers want to make the right choice. They dial your number, not just looking for services, but looking for the experience your reviewers describe.”

It’s time to incorporate reviews into your daily operations. Your customers are looking for them. Your marketing ROI depends on them. And without them, you are just handing business off to your competitors.

Images: Courtesy of connectivity.com and toprankblog.com

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Noticing the Good Guys. The Rewards of Employee Reward and Recognition

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Imagine for a minute that you’ve been feeling the squeeze of recent turns in the economy and had to let a few employees go. The decision is gut-wrenching, but you know for sure, you have to keep your star worker, Shawn. Shawn is a quick learner, the customers love him, and he’s always there to take up others’ slack. Unfortunately, the recent cuts mean he has to take on even more than you usually ask of him, but true to form, Shawn steps up to the plate.

Then, the unimaginable happens and Shawn turns in his resignation to go work for one of your competitors. When you ask him why, he tells you that with all the hard work he’s taken on recently, he’s never once complained, but in truth, he has started to feel like it was all going unrecognized.

“Even just a plain old: Thank you, I see how hard you’re working, would have gone a long way,” he tells you. And with your help, a bad situation, has just gone from bad too much worse.

Killing Motivation

When hard work goes unrecognized, it’s difficult to imagine who would do it all again just to have the same results. Studies on employee recognition back this up time and again. Gallup, who has polled over four million people on the topic, reports that the benefits of employee recognition and reward programs are numerous, including: increased productivity, better employee retention, and higher customer loyalty and satisfaction scores.

One study shows that only one in three US employees would strongly agree that they’ve had their work recognized recently, and that workers who do not feel adequately engaged in this way are two times more likely to say they’ll quit in the next year. Another study even showed significant increases in blood pressure for healthcare workers who you don’t like their boss.

So the risks of under-appreciation are real. According to Business Journal, employee recognition programs, which often cost little in time and resources, may truly be, “One of the greatest missed opportunities for leaders and managers,” today.

Putting Praise Into Play

The research indicates that praise should be public, consistent, and without too much time in between. Here are some proven ways companies can integrate the “Notice the Good Guys” method into their business:

  • Recognize and reward for a job well done.
  • Make recognition public through emails, newsletters, events, bulletin boards, team meetings and social media, so coworkers and clients can see individual accomplishments.
  • Create an internal tracking system to validate efforts and monitor progress.
  • Reward employee performance though public events like company parties.
  • Be authentic and specific in your praise, and avoid any sort of form letter certificates or emails.BES-blog-Employee-Recognition-Gifts (1)


A Rewarding Trend

These days, after seeing proof of the tangible benefits, more and more businesses are heeding this call and adopting employee reward and recognition systems. Not only does this kind of engagement motivate employees to perform better, but also highlights which behaviors and outcomes the business really values.

We, at ReviewBuzz believe in helping good people and business get noticed. The program we’ve designed and shared with thousands of businesses so far helps them leverage the power of people through employee rewards, public recognition, and people-powered online reviews.

It only follows that our internal culture thrives on reward and recognition as well. For example, we give out a weekly honor tied to our core company values called “The Honey Badger Award” where one person is recognized for they way their work has reflected our core values.

With the Honey Badger, the previous week’s winner gets up at a Friday, company-wide lunch and speaks about the new recipient for a minute and a half. The new winner then gets up to receive a gift card, and a chance to spin a giant wheel with prizes. Wheel prizes can sometimes even benefit the whole company, like “Pick a Theme Day,” or “Happy Hour,” not to mention the now infamous “Dance Like Michael Jackson.” This one must be done in front of the whole company with MJ music playing in the background, while the team rightfully chants “Michael, Michael, Michael” as the wheel spins. Of course, the award wouldn’t be complete without the ultimate prize: a sassy stuffed honey badger brimming with the playfulness and camaraderie we hope to encourage in our workplace.

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Because the Review Buzz software is designed to help every business put recognition and reward to work for their bottom line, we love hearing stories of these kinds of successes from our clients. Clients like Blanton’s Heating, Air, and Electrical, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, whose innovative tier-based reward system offers employees unique experience-based prizes for their excellent work. These rewards include a paid day off day spent fishing with the boss, a plus-one Ruth’s Chris dinner with him and his wife, date nights and weekend getaways for two, and other imaginative lures.

Rachel Hyatt of Blanton’s says that the incentive program we helped them engineer has really paid off. She notes how the incentives really got the team excited and motivated them to ask for more customer reviews. She told us that Blanton’s earned more reviews last quarter than they did in all of 2015.

It’s human nature to criticize rather than compliment, and memorize mistakes rather than reward achievements. But let’s face it, the old adage that you catch more flies with honey was popularized for a reason. No one feels very motivated when hard work gets skipped over, and feedback is solely critical.

Noticing the good guys doesn’t need to cost a lot of money or time, pays off in real ROI, and can really be fun. But if you’re not already doing it in your company, don’t beat yourself up. Start focusing on the good, and the rest will follow.

Image: Courtesy of bhengagement.com

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Gamification in Business. New Wave Motivation

 

Continual play throughout our lives is beneficial for both the brain and body, as has been reported in study after study. It’s part of our nature to seek challenge, achievement, levels of success, and winning the prize. In business, this engagement with games and love of winning can come to your advantage in many ways.

Gamification uses elements of gaming, such as competition and winning, in a non-game context to improve productivity and engage “players.” It draws on our innately human desire towards status and achievement to help reach outside goals. Think parenting with stars, or points for prizes. Translated into business, the practice is being used to many ends, including encouraging engagement with a product or service, or boosting customer loyalty programs through reputation points and badges of achievement.

Over 70% of Global 2000 companies now use gamification
for marketing purposes and customer retention. (Source: Mashable)

Even though the concepts behind gamification are older than Mary Poppins’ spoonful of sugar itself, the word is fairly new. Early usage of the word dates back to 2002 to describe the work of computer programmer Nick Pelling. Although it didn’t really catch on until about 2010 when it began to be used to describe methods of incorporating reward aspects into software in ways that started to attract the attention of venture capitalists and Ted Talks alike.

Why Use Gamification in Your Business?

Gaming techniques have been proven to leverage people’s natural desires for mastery, competition, achievement, and status. One key way to use gamification to your company’s benefit is internally, to improve employee performance. When employees are awarded points that be can traded in for gift cards and other prizes, their performance starts to improve markedly. This is especially true when points are earned in a transparent and celebrated way within the work culture.

In his book, Stop Marketing, Be Remarkable, ReviewBuzz founder Mike Montano states, “Incentives are more than just a tool for motivating your team members. They provide the validation that winning customer reviews have a direct positive benefit. . . start with the dangling carrot of incentives.”

Montano says this of the way ReviewBuzz first employed gamification through a highly visible scoreboard to encourage employees to collect emails from customers, “By keeping score, this one method created immediate, dramatic improvements. It also led to healthy competition among the staff to push themselves to do better than their previous numbers and their colleagues.” Ultimately, he says, this approach manifested a culture of discipline, accountability, and empowerment.

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How to Leverage Gamification in Your Business

To use gamification in your own business, you want to start by identifying key players. This means managers, leaders, and front line personnel. Engage key players who will inspire and influence the rest to the team to play to their full potential. This helps keep motivation alive.

A successful gamification system serves five purposes:

  1. Tracks and rewards efficient employees
  2. Tracks who is lagging
  3. Encourages competition
  4. Connects and engages employees
  5. Validates efforts publically

Be sure to award employees publically to create a sense of pride, and build momentum with a game-like experience such as raffle tickets, prize wheels, and non-cash rewards. A good place to look to maximize these techniques is company rallies. This kind of platform to celebrate accomplished goals also serves as a catalyst for the next round of competition.

From tracking systems to company rallies, gamification at the workplace can turn ordinary tasks into a fun and rewarding challenge. Incentives motivate and encourage, and the accolades and healthy competition that goes along with them provide validation that winning matters. Truly, for the business world, this is a win-win.

Images: Courtesy of pulselearning.com and Michael Sloan

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ReviewBuzz and ServiceTitan – Now Integrated!

It’s official. ReviewBuzz and ServiceTitan, two leading software providers for the home services industry, are now seamlessly connected.

And your life is about to get a whole lot easier.

Now, getting more 5-star online reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, Facebook and more will be automatic and easier than ever.

You and your team are going to love it!

Not yet using ReviewBuzz? Request a free 30-day trial of ReviewBuzz and we’ll waive the set-up and integration fees (a $724 value).

Not yet using ServiceTitan? Learn more about ServiceTitan and discover how you’ll save $3,527 on the start-up and integration fees.

ServiceTitan is the #1 software for managing a home services business. It’s powerful yet easy-to-use platform combines scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, sales, marketing, reporting and more in a mobile, cloud-based platform.

Already using both ServiceTitan and ReviewBuzz? What are you waiting for? Get integrated now and we’ll waive the integration fee (a $527 value!). Call 1-888-WIN BUZZ and we’ll help you get integrated.

 

“It’s Like Peanut Butter & Chocolate”

ReviewBuzz & ServiceTitan client William and Susan Roberts-Frew from Sunshine Plumbing, Heating and Air helped beta test the integration and saw amazing results. We know you will too. Check out what they said below:

More Reviews, More Calls and a More Efficient Team? YES!

Online reviews matter – your customers are looking at them before calling you – and the more great reviews you have the more calls you are going to get. You know that.

We released the integration to a group of our mutual clients several months ago, so we could test the integration and make sure it was bulletproof before releasing it to the general public. And these clients saw astounding results.

The early release clients averaged 133% more online reviews and their weekly office staff efficiency increased by an average of 30%!

More Reviews

Make Your Team Happier

With the integration your team won’t have to book and close jobs in two places. It’s all done for your team. Automatic and hands-free!  And with your team getting more reviews, they will be earning more points and prizes through ReviewBuzz’s one-of-a kind Employee Fun & Happiness Program. A recognized and rewarded employee is usually a happy employee. And happy employees? Well, they make your customers happier.

 

Make Your Customers Happier

With your team more productive and happier, they can focus and do a better job where it really matters – with your customers. And since all the reviews and customer feedback you collect in ReviewBuzz are connected to individual employees, you can correct service issues quickly.

Plus, with the proven ReviewBuzz trust-building email automatically sent to customers before the service team arrives, your customers will be more comfortable, more trusting and happier with your service technician.

ReviewBuzz and ServiceTitan

Integration Special – Act by March 4th

Not yet using ReviewBuzz? Request a free 30-day trial of ReviewBuzz and we’ll waive the set-up and integration fees (a $724 value).

Not yet using ServiceTitan? Request a demo now of ServiceTitan and you’ll save $3,527 on the start-up and integration fees.

Already using both ServiceTitan and Reviewbuzz? What are you waiting for? Get integrated now and we’ll waive the integration fee (a $527 value!). Call 1-888-WIN BUZZ and we’ll help you get integrated.

5 Things To Look For In Home Service Software

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One mistake many small to medium-sized home contractor businesses make is thinking that back-end business management software is just for the big dogs. This is simply not true.

It makes sense that a large residential home service business would benefit from having software to track a large number of workers, phone calls, time on job, billable hours vs. non billable, leads vs. conversion and how many leads were lost in the pipeline. However, a small to mid-sized business can potentially benefit even more from SaaS that can streamline its business practices and fine tune its sales processes on a smaller scale.

But what exactly should operational software be able to accomplish for your residential home service business? Here are five things to look for:

  • Worker productivity tracking – How many hours are billable hours for each worker? How many hours were spent on administrative duties? How productive is each employee? Back-end software can track many worker activities depending on what is most important to your business.

 

 

  • Business forecasting – Compare your company’s productivity from year-to-year, month-to-month and more with software that also helps you predict how your business will perform (and is currently performing) with more accuracy.

 

 

  • Scheduling – The software you select should be able to take the guesswork out of creating/updating/changing worker scheduling with the ease of a dashboard. A scheduling dashboard should allow for easy managing and changing schedules with a click and drop capability or with a simple system. Color-coding each worker by status can be a helpful tool, as well.

 

 

  • Dispatch capability – An essential component of a good management software system for service industry businesses is the dispatch function. Efficient dispatching of workers can save money by improving workflow and making it easy to supervise and adjust time management.

 

 

  • Extraordinary customer service and support – Any operational software needs a superb support staff who can answer any questions that might arise and can address them quickly and effectively with minimal hassle. Look for customer testimonials and references before choosing a system for your business.

 
Andrew Loschert is Manager of Marketing Analytics and Optimization for ServiceTitan.

ServiceTitan is the #1 software platform for managing a home services business, incorporating the industry’s best practices to help you run a better business, lower costs, improve sales, provide a better customer experience, and manage your business more easily.

Coming Soon: ReviewBuzz and ServiceTitan are soon to be seamlessly integrated, giving ServiceTitan clients a hands-free way to get 5-star online reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, Facebook and more. To learn more about ServiceTitan, click here.

New Study: 92% Now Read Online Reviews to Evaluate Local Businesses

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BrightLocal, a search and research firm, has conducted a comprehensive survey on how online reviews influence internet users since 2010. Their findings reveal some mind-blowing trends and demonstrate how online reviews are skyrocketing in significance, especially with regard to how they affect consumer purchase decisions.
 
Here are some key takeaways from their research:
 
92% of Consumers are Now Reading Online Reviews (vs. 88% in 2014)
 
That’s. Almost. Everyone. This data comes from responses to the question, “Do you read online customer reviews to determine whether a local business is a good business?” Of the respondents, 33% answered “Yes, regularly,” and a staggering 59% answered “Yes, occasionally.” So if only 8% of consumers don’t read reviews at all, that means just about everyone looks to online reviews to evaluate your business.
 
40% of Consumers Trust a Company After Reading Only 1-3 Reviews (vs. 29% in 2014)
 
Customers in the group were asked, “How many online reviews do you need to read before you feel that you can trust that business?” Incredibly, customers are requiring less and less data to begin forming an opinion about a business. Take a look:
 

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Nearly half make snap judgements after only a few reviews, and the other half want more information. So if you want to turn those viewers into a call, you need a healthy amount of reviews and you need recent reviews. Why? Because the first reviews customers see are, most of the time, your most recent. And if customers are only reading 1-3 reviews before forming an opinion, they better be good.
 
Actually, while we’re on the subject of recent reviews…
 
44% Say Review Must Be Written Within One Month To Be Relevant
 
It’s great to have a high quantity of reviews, and totally fine if they were written years ago. These factor into your overall review rating, so if they are positive they are helping to keep your overall star rating high. But those older reviews are quickly becoming reviews that customers don’t take into consideration when making a decision about your business. You could have put a great deal of work into earning those online reviews, you could have even collected hundreds of them. But if they weren’t recently written, more and more customers don’t find them relevant. Stay current, and keep earning new, timely reviews.
 
Star Rating is #1 Factor Used By Consumers to Judge a Business
 
The first thing customers see when observing online reviews is a business’ overall star rating. And now we know that star rating truly matters, and affects the way consumers judge your business. When respondents were asked, “When judging a local business on its reviews, which of these factors do you pay the most attention to?” they were given the option to select two of the following choices, and answered in this way:

  • Overall star rating (60%)
  • Quantity of reviews (44%)
  • Sentiment of reviews (38%)
  • Age of reviews (33%)
  • If business has responded to reviews (26%)

 
Keep making sure that star rating is as high as it can be. It’s also noteworthy that the second most important factor customers use to judge your business is the quantity of reviews. That’s great news because all the work you put into raising that star rating with more reviews matters, as the quantity of reviews you have is something consumers care about.
 
Only 13% of Consumers Would Consider Using Business with a 1 or 2 star Rating
 
We talk a lot about getting positive reviews with a high star count. We also talk a lot about getting a high quantity of reviews. But does it really matter if one of your review sites has a low rating? According to the data, you bet it does. Only 13% of consumers would give you a call if you have a 1 or 2 star rating.
 
80% of Consumers Trust Reviews as Much as Personal Recommendations
 
Consumers trust each other more than they trust you, and as much as someone they personally know! Word-of-mouth marketing has always been the most powerful form of advertising, and it’s exciting how online reviews have flung the door open for a wider audience to share their experiences with each other. This phenomenon gives you a golden opportunity to generate buzz about your business.
 
Obviously this survey reinforces the importance of getting online reviews. Having a lot of great reviews is critical, and it’s critical that those reviews are recently written.
 
In other words…earn more reviews and Be Remarkable!
 
Image:  Courtesy of BrightLocal
 
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The 10 Best Blogs for Customer Service

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We all know that no one will write a 5-star review for you if they’ve had a bad experience. But did you know they won’t write a review at all if they’ve had just an average experience?
 
 An average experience just doesn’t cut it — think about it. If you had an “okay” day at work and you are asked how your day was, your answer is typically, “Fine,” or “okay.”
 
But if something remarkable happened to you? No one will be able to shut you up!
 
That’s the kind of experience you need to give to each and every one of your customers if you want a consistent flow of 5-star online reviews. You want your customers so excited about your service that they shout your praises from the rooftops.
 
New Ways To “WOW” Your Customers  
 
It can be tough coming up with new ways to WOW your customers and it typically takes more than your own creative genius to muster. We get where you’re coming from. We need fresh ideas sometimes too.
 
For inspiration, we look to other companies and people we respect, in order to learn how they impress their customers.  So we check in on their blogs to see what’s new, and if there are any new nuggets of wisdom we can apply to our own business.
 
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Here are our top ten favorite blogs for delivering superior, remarkable customer service:

     

  1. Zappos’ CEO and COO Blog – The popular internet shopping heaven Zappos was founded
    by customer service visionary Tony Hsieh. While it’s a great idea to pick up his book
    Delivering Happiness, to learn about the best in customer service, this blog is maintained by the executive team at Zappos with the latest ideas and practical applications of world class customer service. There’s a reason why customers love Zappos, and this blog shows you how you can do the same with your own customers.
     

  1. Fonolo – Touted as the blog for call center professionals, this blog provides a fantastic host of tips that any call center team can master. We love this blog because the writers clearly do their research — there are tons of facts and figures to backup their claims, proving these tips will really work! But even cooler is how they own the idea of having fun. Some of the articles are all about how to improve call center culture and how to enjoy work more. Happy call center = happy customers.
     

  1. Contractor Sales Coach – If you are in the home service industry and aren’t familiar with Joe & Julie Crisara — you should be. Their unique approach to training owners and managers has helped countless home service companies improve customer service to maximize sales. Their Contractor Sales Coach blog is kept up to date with the latest ideas and strategies for improving not only sales, but customer service.
     

  1. Shep Hyken’s Customer Service – Shep Hyken is a best selling author on the subject of customer service. With four books under his belt,Shep has built a solid reputation as a customer service and experience expert. When he’s not speaking at conferences or writing another powerful book, Shep writes on his blog and shares the secrets behind wowing customers into ambassadors of businesses. The blog comes with tips on customer service, but also offers a wealth of resources such as interviews, infographics, featured guest blogs, and more.
     

  1. Help Scout – This blog has a beautiful user interface that makes clicking around a delight. Each of the articles is put into a distinct category, and the one you will want to focus on is their Support section. There you can find easy-to-read articles on everything from handling difficult support situations to what books to read if you’re in customer service.
     

  1. Jackie Huba – What sets Jackie Huba apart from other customer service coaches is that she is a customer loyalty expert. She focuses not only on a single customer experience, but instead on converting one-time customers to lifetime customers — loyal to your brand till the end. Her blog is packed with insight on how to create repeat business, customer loyalty and customer evangelists.
     

  1. HDIConnect –  This is straying a little off the path of “10 best blogs” because this is a hub for customer service bloggers complete with a forum for discussion. This is a great place to go for connecting with others and sharing ideas. But more importantly the Blogs section organizes blogs by service area, such as Service Management, Desktop Support, Support Operations, Customer Service, etc.
     

  1. Groove HQ – From the start you’ll see something is different about Groove HQ. The blog features a unique vertical timeline, which makes browsing through blog posts easy, improving your ability to find a relevant article to your particular business and role. From there, writer Len Markidan fills his articles with to-the-point tips on practical customer service strategies. What we like the most is he doesn’t fluff his blogs with wordiness or noise.  Well, we also like how he provides visuals to enhance learning and make sure his teachings stick.
     

  1. ZenDesk – We use ZenDesk, we like ZenDesk, and yeah, we read ZenDesk’s blog. They just plain old fashioned know what they are doing, and they are awesome enough to share what they’ve learned on their playful blog. Their tips of the week are ideas that you can use right away, which we like.  Between the tips of the week, and insightful articles, we like the way they use humor to increase engagement so you are actually reading the article, not thinking about what you need to get at the grocery store later.
     

  1. CSI: Customer Service Investigator – This is a cool site. CSI goes all over the place with customer service, which is where you need to go to. Topics cover ideas of how to improve call centers and how to treat your customers better. But they also cover stories on how big companies are improving their customer service, which can inspire you to implement similar practices and processes at your company.

 
Remember, customers don’t write reviews if they feel, “meh,” about your service.
 
You need to be remarkable to motivate your customers to do some finger dancing on their keyboards to write you a 5-star online reviews.
 
We hope these blogs will help you get there.

 

Why Negative Reviews Are Actually a Good Thing

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Although it may feel bad – those negative online reviews are actually a good thing for your business.

No, we haven’t completely lost our minds.

Here’s why.

Gives You An Outside Perspective

It’s hard to know everything that’s going on with your business. You may have a rude employee in your company but have no clue they are abusing your customers. Personnel know (most of the time…) to behave in front of their boss, but can turn right around and rip off your customers, behave cruelly, and otherwise misrepresent the brand you work so hard to polish and run well.

Negative reviews give you an excellent opportunity to learn from your customers, and overall improve your business in the long run. Take a deep breath, read the review humbly, and don’t take to blaming the review writer immediately. Use it as a learning moment – that review may be the push you need to focus back on your company vision or that it’s time to enroll your employees in some training. After all, how can you grow if you don’t know what to improve?
transparency

 

Transparency Builds Trust

Advertisers started lying to the public ages ago. In reaction, shoppers are now skeptical of every single thing they read, sniffing for the lie behind a too-good-to-be-true promise. This phenomena is just as relevant with online reviews. The second a potential customer finds an overall 5-star review rating, they become curious how that company rigged a perfect review score.

“Maybe the company just has one review, and it’s 5-stars.”

“Are all of these real online reviews?”

“What if they pay the website to boost the score? Or the customers?”

Customers don’t expect you to be the Mary Poppins of your industry – practically perfect in every way. They know your business is run by people, and people will always make a mistake here and there. Leaving the negative review on your review site shows customers that you are an honest company capable of making – and owning up to – mistakes.

Opportunity to Humanize Your Brand

Speaking of owning up to mistakes, those negative reviews are a perfect opportunity to demonstrate who you are as a company. Like your grandmother may have told you, “We are who we really are in the face of adversity,” is absolutely true in this case. The audience online is watching how you respond to those negative reviews.

If you respond with kindness, understanding, and put forth a genuine effort to remedy the reviewer’s concerns, the audience will see you are doing your best to make it right. This makes your company more “real” to the customer, more approachable, and more of a company they would like to call.

“The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”
– Viktor Frankl

 

Don’t Live in Fear of Negative Reviews

We get it. Negative reviews can be scary because no one likes to hear negative things about them! But negative reviews, when handled correctly, can actually be a great way to demonstrate your humanity, honesty, and willingness to improve to the audience watching online. Customers are constantly hunting for companies they can trust – and negative reviews are a great way to demonstrate that you are that company to trust.

 

The World is Changing Fast

The world of digital marketing will never stop changing. Once you think you’ve finally conquered the internet and fully understand the search engines – everything changes again.

For example, did you know that 84% of all consumers read an average of 4-6 reviews before trusting a business?

84Percent

That means 8 out of 10 of your customers are looking at your reviews before deciding if they are going to call you.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yelp know this, and they have been adapting to these trends by making online reviews and ratings an integral part of the search engine experience.

This, among other reasons, has made this past year in digital marketing an especially exciting one. Oh, and by “exciting,” we mean both thrilling – and absolutely terrifying – for local businesses.

Big Shake-Ups in Local Search

As you know, search engines control the information your prospective customers see. In an attempt to figure out the way search engines organize results, savvy marketers armed with fancy pants and advanced degrees got to work cracking the code to get their businesses to the top of search rankings.

And it worked! For a long time.

But Google and the like aren’t a bunch of dodos who don’t evolve. The algorithms search engines use are constantly changing. Here are a couple of examples:

  • Pigeon Update – Possibly the biggest change in Google’s local search algorithm was last summer’s Pigeon update. While there were several changes with this update, one of the most notable was how Google made reviews sites like Yelp, YP, etc. rank higher than before. In many cases, these local directories rank even higher than most company websites, prompting some to declare that “SEO is dead.” Put simply – if a company doesn’t look great on local directories – they won’t rank highly in search results.

 

  • The “Snack Pack” – Traditionally, when a user searched for a local business, Google would retrieve the top seven results and display them on a map – this was called the “7-pack.” In August, this all changed when Google reduced those results to display only the 3 top companies, conveniently called a “3-pack”….or what marketers have unlovingly called the “snack pack.”

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Trend Toward Mobile

2014 was the first year that more users accessed the internet from mobile phone instead of desktop. It is clear that search engines are privy to this fact given all of the updates we’ve seen recently. For example, August’s “Mobilegeddon” proved to heavily favor mobile devices. This change made mobile friendly sites float to the top of Google search results, while sites that were not optimized for mobile sank to the bottom of results.

Additionally, top experts suggest the reason Google moved to the “snack pack” was to make search results appear better on mobile. Which makes sense if you think about it – it’s easier to see 3 companies in large letters than seven in tiny font on a mobile device.

These have been mighty changes in how search engines are handling our seeming collective move to mobile. Analysts suggest mobile will only become more important as time moves along and search engines try to keep up and stay relevant.

Is Local SEO Dead?

As previously mentioned when discussing the Pigeon update, some marketers are suggesting that SEO is dead. In fact, we stumbled upon a Moz article last week that pointed out how online reviews matter more than anything else to users, which speaks directly to their importance to the search engines. In sum, the article pointed out how Google now ranks sites that include reviews higher than the actual company websites themselves.

If you don’t have great online reviews – that should freak you out.

What’s more, getting found online is not only about Google search results. As Moz author Ryan Washere notes, “It’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) not GO (Google Optimization). Yelp is a search engine. Facebook is a search engine.” This means that online reviews on ALL the different review sites and search engines matter, because sometimes your prospective customers skip right over Google and instead go to sites like Yelp or Facebook to find a company like yours.

Yelp Reviews on Yahoo, Bing and Apple Maps?

While we are talking about Yelp, by the way, Yelp reviews are appearing everywhere – not just on your Yelp page. Yahoo displays Yelp reviews in your local listing, and so do Bing and most recently of all – Apple maps. If someone searches for your services on any of those sites, they will see your Yelp reviews. That’s a TON of eyeballs on your Yelp reviews!

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While Digital Marketing Evolves, Online Reviews Continue to Matter MORE

We are seeing that online reviews are one of the biggest factors in the largest changes in the digital marketing game today. For your company to be competitive online, it’s become clear you need to look good across platforms on the internet – not just on your website – and the best way to do that is with 5-star reviews on sites that matter.

You need to do something about your reviews, whether it’s using ReviewBuzz or some other strategy to get great reviews. And you need to do it now, before it’s too late and your competitors get the jump on you.

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New Video! How to Ask for Online Reviews

We’ve been saying it for years – getting 5-star reviews on sites like Yelp, Google and Facebook is a guaranteed way to help your company earn more customers, get repeat business, and build a more profitable company. The reason is customers trust online reviews, and they want to hear what other customers are saying about your company before making the decision to give you a call.

Now when you’re rolling out a review-getting program like ReviewBuzz, a huge step in launching it to any sort of success is showing your team how to ask for those online reviews.

We can tell you until we’re blue in the face that you need to tell your team to “just ask for the review.” But sometimes your team resists. They’ll flatly tell you, “Well, I don’t know how to ask for the review.”

We’re here to show you how.

Asking customers to write a review can feel a little awkward at first.

So we decided to take some of the guesswork out of the asking experience. A few of our not-so-evil ReviewBuzz scientists dove into research, to figure out the most effective “asks” that motivated customers to hop on their computers and say something great about companies online.

By asking our most successful clients what they do, asking review-writers why they wanted to write reviews, and conducting interviews with employees who have more reviews than anyone else, we compiled the best talking points that generated the most review results.

Then, we jumped in front of the camera to show you exactly what to do.

After all, we don’t want to send you out there sounding like a goofball. Although if you do, please do feel free to send us your stories…

Watch the video above of ReviewBuzz staffers acting out the best ways – and worst ways – to get online reviews. You’re in for a treat.

 

 

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