Stranger Danger! What if I told you that the majority of people under the age of 35, despite growing up on years of safety messages and After-School Specials, still would trust a stranger just as much as they would a family member.
Ok, perhaps I am being a little dramatic, but it is true. A recent study by Brightlocal showed millennials overwhelmingly (more than 80%) give online reviews from strangers just as much weight when it comes to making buying decisions as they would a referral from a friend or family member.
Before you think to yourself that this is just one of those funny millennial things, a rapidly increasing number of people are using online reviews to help guide their purchases across the age spectrum. How will you leverage this information to improve your security business?
Consumers generally make buying decisions based on one of three factors: cheap price, it is a unique product, or the expectation that doing business with a particular company will result in a better experience than its competition.
Given that most of the security industry offers products and services at or near same price, and that the products offered, in general, have similar features, what makes your company different is probably one of the most important messages you can spread.
While there are many different ways to help tell the public the story of your company, leveraging online reviews to your benefit is free – and it can have a substantial impact very quickly.
Where to Start
Online or social media reviews can be found almost anywhere. If I asked you to come up with a list of review sites, you would probably start with the same ones that I would: Google, Facebook and Yelp. However, if you take a moment to think about all the places you have seen reviews, the number quickly grows: Your local chamber might allow customers to review members, the BBB in some areas now allows for reviews, and there are thousands upon thousands of third-party websites that take and publish reviews.
With all that choice, where do you start? The smart move would be to focus on those that have the most impact, such as highly public ones like Facebook or Google reviews that could help boost your SEO. This is where you should be directing the majority of your efforts in pushing to get reviews. That does not mean you have to ignore the local ones that may be popular in the community (such as your chamber), but spend most of your time on the places where the majority of your potential customers are spending their time. Give some thought as to where you should focus your efforts and start there.
Getting Good Reviews
Now that you know where you want to focus, it is time to turn attention to what you should be doing. You can just sit back and watch reviews come in – but you probably won’t be happy. While you might get some good reviews, the majority are likely to be negative.
Think about it this way, leaving a review takes time (albeit just a minute or two) and some effort. It is generally not something that happy customers think about doing; however, it is something that unhappy customers will absolutely do – if only to get your attention.
If your plan is to just react to reviews that come in, you are more likely to have a lower rating that only showcases the negative customers. That is most likely not reflective of your entire customer sentiment, and it is certainly not a story you only want to tell one-sided.
To tell the full story, you should consider a more proactive outreach campaign to ask happy customers to leave reviews. The good news – and I can tell you this from both personal and professional experience – is that a surprising number of your satisfied customer base would leave you a positive review if you just took the time to ask. Do not just send an email; instead, make it a common practice for your customer-facing team to ask for one any time they have had a positive customer interaction.
Think about it this way: Most often it is the technician, salesperson or customer care rep who is able to build an ongoing personal relationship with a customer. If they were to use their relationship to ask the customer for the personal favor of a leaving a review, they would be much more likely to get success than a canned, generic email blasted out at random, or a request buried in a monthly newsletter.
Companies that are able to crack the code and get their team working together to make it a relationship builder and the ones that have the highest returns and most success in building online review stores.
Give Your Team the Tools to Succeed
To make things easier on your staff, get creative – provide them with a postcard leave behind with a QR code that points directly to desired review profiles (Google or Yelp, for example), or consider using a third-party service that helps your team guide and streamline the review process. There are several services out there, and while they may not be cheap, they do come with other features that could help improve customer communication and consolidate review tracking.
I am often asked by fellow security business owners and managers if they should run promotions or otherwise incentivize customers to leave reviews. While it is a great idea to incentivize your customers for their loyalty or for helping your business with referrals, it is never a good idea to offer payment or discounts in exchange for referrals. In addition to the risk of being seen as a company that has to buy their positive reviews, many of the review companies are also very strict about ensuring that only unfiltered reviews are given.
Should the review site even suspect you are paying or incentivizing reviews, you could be subject to actions that could include de-listing your site and downgrading your SEO efforts. While there may be nothing wrong with incentivizing your employees to ask for a review (rewarding their adherence to policy and procedure), you should not be paying customers to leave one.
Dealing with Negative Reviews
Now that your business is getting a ton of reviews, you should realize that no matter how good your business is, there will be negative reviews. It is just a fact of life, and if you looked at some of the most reputable companies in the world, you would find some low scores and scathing reviews.
The good news is you can turn these into something that works for you. First, as frustrating as it can be to read someone talk poorly about your hard-working company or employees, take a step back and recognize that there may be a grain of truth in what the customer is saying. Use it as an opportunity to see things from the consumer’s point of view. Smart organizations use positive and negative feedback to constantly re-evaluate their processes and refine their customer experience.
Additionally, make sure you respond to the person who left the negative review. Chances are, they left the review because they want someone from the company to respond, and they feel the need to be heard. Do not engage with the issues online – that can quickly escalate out of your control – but acknowledge that the customer has had a negative experience, state your commitment to working together to find a solution, and then take the conversation offline.
Joseph Mitton is Director of Marketing and Customer Experience for Lancaster, Pa.-based security integrator Select Security, which was named North America’s fastest-growing security integrator as part of the 2019 Security Business Fast50 (read more at www.securityinfowatch.com/21074244).
