Do you ask for reviews?

[CAautogroup]

Do you ask for reviews? If so, how? Via email, have a link on the customers reciept, sign in waiting area? 

 

We are really lacking in the online/social media department and would like to boost our overall ratings on yelp, google, etc.

 

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions.

 

Nick

[AndersonAuto]

We do ask for reviews, but I've recently changed how it gets done. While we now do it via text as part of our CRM program with My Shop Manager, we used to do it at the front counter.

Asking at the front counter is by far the cheapest and most reliable way to get it done. Your customers are happy and glad to be back in their car, why not ask for a review right there? Sending an email to ask for the review is extremely ineffective, and calling them a few days later to ask will only annoy them. Sending a text is effective, and doesn't seem to annoy anyone. But it's still not as effective as asking at the front counter. Every one of your customers is carrying a smartphone, put them to work for you!

[SPG356]

I use Kukui for CRM only as we have a very, very good website created independently from them. They have a "Please Leave A Review" email that gets sent out a couple of days after customers pick up their vehicle. When we started with them in April of 2017 (10 months ago) we had 44 reviews with a 4.4 rating. Now we have 115 reviews with a 4.8 rating. Oftentimes the comments we get when new prospective customers call or request a quote online is "I see how good your reviews are so I wanted to contact you..."

Depending on your location, if you don't have strong reviews or great online presence you will be left behind by the other shops that do. Just my 2 cents.

Edited January 14, 2018 by SPG356

[John Fabrega]

I posted a pretty easy method to ask for and get Google reviews a while back. A number of folks are using it and seeing good results.

 

[JustTheBest]

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[AndersonAuto]

In my 20 group we were assigned the task of developing a system to get more Google reviews. It was crazy how intricate and involved some of the processes were. Some people literally had a full page process written, and when tried were very ineffective.

My process was by far the simplest and most effective.

1. Teach your service advisors how to leave a review on both Android and Apple devices.
2. Go to the bank and withdraw $500 in $50 bills.
3. Slap that stack of cash on the front counter and tell your advisors that you'll gladly trade a $50 bill for a positive Google or Yelp review. Just print it off and come get your cash.
4. Give it a couple of days, then decide if you want to go get more cash and do it again.

My advisors work four days a week on a rotating schedule, and I've had guys who were off for two days complain because they didn't have an opportunity to get in on the cash. Ten reviews in less than two days, and worth way more than the $500 it cost me. The only downside is that it's hard to get my advisors to actually ask for the review unless they are offered cash. I have asked, and they all agree that it's important and we need to do it, but actually doing it is a different matter. Cash made all the difference.

Edited January 16, 2018 by AndersonAuto

[John Fabrega]

We have a couple of customers that provide 'reputation management' services. They work with you to craft the hopefully most responsive 'ask' for the review and then with simple clicks take the customer to an initial review where if the customer chooses fewer than X stars, it notifies you so you can fix the problem. If the customer gives a positive initial review it gives them choices and routes them to the review platform of their choice (i.e. Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc).

I'd be happy to make some introductions if desired.

[meowpox]

We dont ask customers to leave reviews. As a customer of other businesses, i hate being asked that. Makes me feel like the positive experience i had was not that genuine. Not sure if I'm just not having similar experiences as you all but is it not enough to just give outstanding customer service? But I guess it also depends on type of shop you have and if you're going for volume. 

[gandgautorepair]

On 1/18/2018 at 5:19 PM, meowpox said:

We dont ask customers to leave reviews. As a customer of other businesses, i hate being asked that. Makes me feel like the positive experience i had was not that genuine. Not sure if I'm just not having similar experiences as you all but is it not enough to just give outstanding customer service? But I guess it also depends on type of shop you have and if you're going for volume. 

If you're going to position yourself for the long term it would be hard to make the case that you can do it without online reputation and ranking. In that way, reviews are important. If you want to grow, reviews are important in attracting new customers. If you live in an area with a lot of traveling traffic, like we do, reviews are how people on a trip find a repair shop if they have a problem. We have found that most people search "auto repair reviews", not just auto repair near me. Like it or not, I think reviews are a reality and we need to exceed or at least keep pace with our competition.

We get most of our reviews through Mitchell CRM and SureCritic. Not the best, since it's not Facebook or Google, but when people search "reviews" then the SureCritic site with our reviews shows on Google. Also, the SureCritic is linked on our Facebook page and on our website, so it's visible to people who click on us through organic search or Adwords. We also get some crossover google reviews from it. We also get more Google reviews and Facebook reviews with our MyShopManager follow up. Overall we get quite a few reviews, and it's all automated.

[JustTheBest]

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[meowpox]

45 minutes ago, gandgautorepair said:

If you're going to position yourself for the long term it would be hard to make the case that you can do it without online reputation and ranking. In that way, reviews are important. If you want to grow, reviews are important in attracting new customers. If you live in an area with a lot of traveling traffic, like we do, reviews are how people on a trip find a repair shop if they have a problem. We have found that most people search "auto repair reviews", not just auto repair near me. Like it or not, I think reviews are a reality and we need to exceed or at least keep pace with our competition.

We get most of our reviews through Mitchell CRM and SureCritic. Not the best, since it's not Facebook or Google, but when people search "reviews" then the SureCritic site with our reviews shows on Google. Also, the SureCritic is linked on our Facebook page and on our website, so it's visible to people who click on us through organic search or Adwords. We also get some crossover google reviews from it. We also get more Google reviews and Facebook reviews with our MyShopManager follow up. Overall we get quite a few reviews, and it's all automated.

Never said reviews aren't important. Just said we don't ask our customers to leave them. We have 5 stars on yelp, 79 reviews -- been open for 3 years. 5 stars, 39 reviews on fb. In this day in age, I feel if you give crazy amazing service, they'll genuinely want to leave a review. I'm just being honest in saying I hate when companies ask me to leave a review after having a pleasant experience with them and I think a lot of customers feel that way. Just something to note.