Home Service Business Review Process

The first way is to make it easy for them.

Review platforms like Google and Yelp want you to review businesses on their platforms, so they have links you can use to go straight there. Put these links on a dedicated page on your website.

Your sales staff can direct them to these links (better yet, they would have these links stored on their phone). Your phone staff can do so as well. You can make these links easy to access by having clickable buttons on your home page that direct clients to those pages.

Next, create QR codes attached directly to these links. These are the best use case for accessing and leaving reviews, and your sales staff should have direct access to them.

Better: create custom QR codes for each sales person, so you can track who is sending review requests. This involves a small investment in a service that will track such things, but one job will pay for that service for 5 years or more.

Now let’s say you get your Google review.

Job done, right?

No!

Now that you have a person willing to leave you a review, go one step further.

Thank Beth for her review, then offered to buy her a cup of coffee if she will also put that review on Yelp and on Nextdoor.

It’s important that she not cut and paste, but write a fresh review, even if it contains all the same elements. You CAN have ChatGPT rewrite that same review in 5 different drafts and offer it to Beth to then paste. I don’t see that as unethical at all, since it is a legit customer who legit bought a service from you, and contains all the same factual elements.

You’re not fabricating any fake reviews, but simply restating the same review, and making it easier for Beth to leave that review in different places.

That is up to you.

One more thing on reviews: GET KEYWORDS IN THEM.

Keywords in reviews are powerful.

Read these 2 reviews and I think it will make sense:

“John and his team are great! They took care of us every step of the way, and we couldn’t be happier!”

“We had John and his team out to remodel our kitchen, and they did a great job! They took care of us every step of the way, and we love our new kitchen!”

See the difference?

This has a huge impact on the relevance of the review for Jim and Beth, but even more important, it gives AI and Google subject matter with which to categorize your review, and thus to return it as relevant for all future searches in the same keyword universe.

The best way to achieve this is to “seed” the review request. When you ask for the review, say something like,

“Sarah, we’re so glad you were so happy with your new kitchen! When you leave your review at this link, please consider including the service, like ‘We hired John and his team to remodel our kitchen, and …’ then enter the details fo your experience. This will help us a great deal, thank you in advance!

P.S. It would be great if you could include a few of your pictures of the work as well!”

It’s very important that you don’t try to influence the review to be positive. Good work will take care of that. If Google gets wind of you trying to influence a review to be positive, they can really come down on you, and even suspend your account. You don’t want that.

This is what your process should look like. I imagine, if you’re reading this book, your process does not look like this.

The good news is, you can fix this without any Consultant. You do not need to hire me or any other consultant to fix your review process. You just have to do the hard work of asking.

I know, I know, if you’re a business owner who values integrity and honesty and giving a fair deal to your customers, the last thing you wanna do is ask for reviews. However, just like oil changes and taxes, you can’t avoid it.

If you know, this is a need in your business, I beg you, put this book down right now, go write a review process for your business, and email five of your most recent customers and ask them for a review.

I’ve even written a process for you that you can download for free at my website, and you’re reading it now!

Here are the platforms you should have readily available for any customer to review you on.

• Google
• Facebook
• Yelp
• Next-Door
• Thumbtack
• Houzz

If you don’t already have profiles on these platforms, stop what you’re doing and sign up. Then, start systematically, consistently building reviews on each one.