Dealing with Negative Customer Reviews

A major part of owning and operating a roofing business is finding customers and then providing them with the best service possible. However, sometimes no matter how hard you try, you sometimes receive a negative customer review.

Many roofing companies use contractor websites like Angie’s List or other sites to promote themselves. This is also where customers are able to add reviews to the contractors they’ve used and use other customers reviews to research roofing contractors for them to use.

This is an excellent opportunity to market your company and grow your business in today’s competitive market. However, the downside to all of this exposure is the occasional negative reviews that every business winds up receiving at least a couple.

In today’s digital age, if something bad happens on a job, there is a good chance the customer will write a negative review about the experience. Unfortunately, bad reviews can cause serious damage to a company’s reputation. Here are a few tips on how to deal with negative customer reviews and turn them around.

• Contact the customer to hear their side. Sometimes complaints can wind up being just miscommunication. However, if your crew was at fault, then just admit to it and do whatever it takes to make the problem right.

• The customer is always right. It’s a good business practice to always follow this mantra. Make sure you always leave the customer satisfied, no matter what the situation is.

• Respond to all of the reviews you receive. Even if you speak to the customer offline and clear the matter up. Make sure you respond online as well so there is a record of your attempt to clear up the matter. In the case of a negative review, this shows you care of fixing your mistakes. In the case of positive reviews, thanking the customer for their review shows you appreciate them taking the time to leave you a review, and that you are thankful for a positive outcome to the job you finished.

• Ask satisfied customers to post a favorable review. This will counteract the bad reviews and show that you receive more satisfied customers than unsatisfied ones.

The best way to avoid negative customer reviews is to leave all of your customers satisfied with a job well done every time. Here are some tips to help make sure unhappy customers are rare.

• Have a procedure in place to check every job for problems when it’s finished. If a problem is found, have a procedure in place to correct it before it reaches the customer and becomes an issue.

• Make an appointment. Tell your customer when you will be at their home. If you’re late or need to reschedule, call them before the appointment time to explain what’s going on. Don’t make them call to find out where you are and why you aren’t at their home when you said you’d be.

• Have a skilled customer service representative deal directly with your customers. Hire someone who is patient, understanding, sensitive and caring to handle discussions with your customers. This is important because this person will be the face and voice of your business, so you want to make sure they can handle any situation professionally. Also, make sure this person has all of the information about each job so,

• when asked, they can respond with confidence and show your customers you have knowledgeable and competent people working for you.

• Create a survey for each customer to fill out at the end of the job. This is a huge help because it will show you your strong points as well as areas that you need to improve. It will also give you a way to track the job performance of your employees, your company and your management skills.

Negative reviews happen and occasionally you’ll have an unsatisfied customer, it’s important to try to minimize both and also to learn from them so you can fine tune your operation to do better the next time.