How Can I Offer Ways for My HVAC/​Solar Customers to Provide Feedback?

At Rocket Media, we know that reviews are important for our clients. For local HVAC and Solar businesses, they serve as proof to prospective customers that choosing your company is a safe investment.

And that ​“proof” is in the numbers. One study reported that if a small business has more than nine current reviews, they earn 52% more revenue than the average. And if a business has more than 25 recent reviews, that increases to 108%.

So, how can you encourage your customers to share their experiences?

There are multiple ways to get more customer reviews and we’ll share several strategies with you, including:

• Train Your Team To Encourage Your Customers To Give Feedback
• Train Your CSRs To Follow Up via Phone Call
• Send Automated Emails
• Use Social Media
• Leverage Existing Referral Programs

However, rather than imple­menting just one of the strategies below, we strongly suggest that you incor­porate multiple or all of these strategies into your ongoing HVAC marketing strategy.

Offering Incen­tives Is Against Google’s Guidelines

There are a lot of companies that offer customers money, products, or services in exchange for positive reviews. While this can be an effective strategy, it’s risky. Most major review sites such as Better Business Bureau, Google, and Yelp have strict rules that prohibit incen­tivized reviews.

Of course, what consti­tutes an ​“incen­tivized review” is somewhat of a grey area. Some sites are explicit in their rule against offering anything (whether it’s money or products/​services) in exchange for a review. Others deem the practice fair game as long as the review clearly states that it was made in exchange for something. And then other sites accept the practice as long as the person leaving the review is a verified customer and was not pressured to leave a positive spin.

All the same, companies that are caught in breach of a review site’s specific rules regarding incen­tivized reviews can be penalized. Depending on the review site, such as the better business bureau, the penalty can range anywhere from removed reviews, suspended listings, or even lawsuits and large fees.

At Rocket Media, we tread lightly when it comes to any strategy involving incen­tivized reviews. We typically don’t encourage our HVAC or Solar clients to enact this strategy. Instead, we’ve found various other options that work especially well for the unique needs of an HVAC/​Solar company.

Let’s take a look…

Train Your Team To Encourage Your Customers To Give Feedback

Train Your CSRs To Follow Up via Phone Call

Your Customer Service Repre­sen­ta­tives are another secret weapon when it comes to getting more reviews. And even better, these employees tend to have impec­cable social skills.

If you don’t already have a solid follow-up call strategy, we suggest imple­menting one. Our most successful clients train CSRs to call 1 – 2 days after a repair or install is completed to ask customers to share their experiences.

But don’t stop there. While they’re still on the phone, train your CSR’s to offer to send the customer an email right then and there with links to your company’s review listings. Anything you can do to eliminate work and friction on the customer’s end helps.

That said, it would help to have a prepared email (that can be quickly person­alized) for your CSR’s to send to happy customers before they hang up the phone.

Send Automated Emails

If you aren’t already collecting your customers’ email address at the time of sched­uling their appointment, you need to implement this practice ASAP. Having the email address of customers who received services from you means that you can send an automated email to them after a desig­nated amount of time (3 – 5 days after service is best).

This is an extremely efficient method. You essen­tially write one email that can be re-used for hundreds or even thousands of customers.

Use Social Media

Get into the habit of posting any new or recent reviews you’ve received on your social media accounts. Often­times, this can prompt or remind other customers to also give feedback.

This is also a relatively low-cost strategy. Your post can be as simple as a screenshot of the review or as sophis­ti­cated as a custom-designed, branded post.

Leverage Existing Referral Programs

If you have a referral program, make sure that you track and collect the contact infor­mation of any customer who refers you to friends and family. This way, you can reach out to these customers directly (we suggest having a CSR call them soon after you receive their referral infor­mation) and encourage them to find you on Yelp or Google.

We like this option because it leverages existing efforts within your company (meaning it’s a low-cost effort).

However, if your particular referral program promises cash or other forms of rewards, we suggest making it clear to customers that they will receive those rewards no matter what.