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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:
 

 
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
 

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.
 

 
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.

 
2. 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.

 
3. 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.

 
4. 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.

 
5. 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.

 
6. 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.

 
7. 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.

 
8. 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.

 
9. 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.

 
10. 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.

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?

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.”

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!

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.

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.

The internet, social media, and the major search engines have enabled customers to research and learn about companies before they shell out their hard-earned dollars on the services they need. This is good news for reputable companies—at least those with savvy marketing skills and a knowledge of the review sites. However, these review sites are not alike.

Learn more about some of the best-known review websites today, so you can make sure your contracting firm is listed—and that you are getting the high-level reviews your business deserves.

Yelp 

Yelp is a review site—and that is it. The site was designed to help consumers find local enterprises of all types. Yelp reviews often rank high on all search engines for local searches, making it crucial to get listed and even more important that your reviews be accurate and ideally with plenty of 5-star ratings. Additionally, Yelp reviews are syndicated to other services including Apple Maps (for the iPhone), Bing and Yahoo.

Google

Google is the leader in search engines today. Nearly 65% of searches are completed using Google. Anything you can do to improve your standing on this search engine Behemoth is vital. Google reviews are one of the simplest ways you can do just that. All it takes is creating a Google + business account, and then customers can review your business plus you get the social benefits of Google + too.

Bing 

Bing is the second largest search engine and a crucial player in the review market. Bing reviews work much the same way as they do on Google except that local searches on Bing utilize the reviews from the Yelp Engine. Customers can search reviews locally to find nearby contractors and other service businesses—making it vital that you show up in these listings.

Yahoo

Yahoo is the third largest search engine, but that still translates to millions of searches ever month. Like Bing, Yahoo local searches pull from the Yelp engine. However, due to algorithm differences, you may find that your site shows up higher or lower on one site versus the other, so it is worth looking at the rankings and comparing results.

Facebook

You may think of Facebook as just a social media platform, but it as quickly grown into much more. When you create a business page for your company, customers can leave reviews. This makes your page more visible through standard search and gives you authority on the Facebook platform as well. This is just one more reason to consider upgrading your page to a business page on Facebook (which is free, by the way).

You may wonder; why doesn’t this article include reference to Thumbtack, Home Advisor or the heavily advertised Angie’s List as important review sites? In actuality, these are not review sites at all. They are paid lead generation tools.

Websites like these may be part of your marketing plan. However, these sites are quite a bit different from a free-form review site (such as Yelp!) that encourages all visitors to leave online reviews and read those left by others.

Now that you know a little more about how online reviews and reputation management for contractors work you may want to explore the concept a bit further.

Poke around our site to learn more about our unique software. We would love to help you start driving more web traffic and getting more calls by harnessing the power of 5-star reviews on the sites that matter most.

Image:  Courtesy of Huffington Post

Let’s face it – Yelp is a four letter word for most of us. It seems like the only reviews we see on it are negative reviews – and all the positive reviews get pushed into the dustbin called “…other reviews that are not currently recommended”.

Take heart though, despite riling us up and getting our blood boiling negative reviews come with great opportunity.

By responding to your negative reviews you can reduce the impact on your Yelp page. In some cases you may even get more calls to your business from a negative review than a positive one.

Here are some tips on how to respond to negative yelp reviews:

First, don’t be emotional. Take a deep breath…and relax. This is a great opportunity – you’ll see why when you read this.

Next, log in to your Yelp business account and add a public comment to the review.  https://biz.yelp.com/

Resolving the issue publicly will tell a story to future visitors to your Yelp listing that you care and that you are committed to making customers happy  (studies have shown that a negative review with a public comment from the business creates a better experience – and drive more calls – than a 5-star review).

In your public comment…

• Always thank the customer for the feedback – this is a golden opportunity to learn and improve.
• Be contrite – admit that you made mistake and that you want to make it right
• Have the comment come from the business owner
• Tell the customer that you will be sending them a private message in Yelp with your cell#, and ask them to call
• Tell the customer you will be calling them personally as well

Next, send a private message to customer via your Yelp Business Account Admin.

In your private message…

• Always thank the customer for the feedback
• Be contrite – admit that you made mistake and that you want to make it right
• Include your cell# and ask them to call
• Tell the customer you will be calling personally as well

Resolve the issue and then ask for either an update to the review (this is the preferred method because it creates a great story of customer service to future visitors), or ask them to remove the review.

We know sometimes customers just can’t be satisfied, so even if they don’t go back and revise or remove the review, you have made a public display of great customer service and that will make a bigger impact on future visitors to the page than a 5-star review.

And, as always keep providing great service and earning great reviews because the more reviews you have in your account, the less volatile your star rating will be. You’ll be able to absorb any 1- or 2-star review without it changing your overall star rating.