Using Text Messages To Get Reviews

I think the days of using stan­dard, tem­plate emails to get reviews from clients are just about over. I say ​“just about” because I know some of you are using this approach with suc­cess, but that suc­cess is mod­er­ate at best. 

In today’s world, most con­sumers are total­ly com­fort­able with hun­dreds (or even thou­sands) of emails piled up in their inbox­es, and your email ask­ing for a review is just going to dis­ap­pear in the heap. 80% of the time, it will nev­er be seen or respond­ed to. 

So, what are your options?

Tex­ting Clients for Reviews: Easy, Quick, and Convenient

I am a huge fan of ask­ing for a review in per­son, but I com­plete­ly under­stand the chal­lenges many of you face in train­ing your field staff to do this. 

My sec­ond favorite approach is to use a skilled office man­ag­er or assis­tant to call cus­tomers direct­ly after a project is fin­ished. This has a fair­ly high suc­cess rate, too. 

If those sys­tems aren’t in place yet, then it’s def­i­nite­ly time to start tex­ting. If done care­ful­ly, SMS (text) mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a fan­tas­tic way to reach your cus­tomers AND get a response. Do it too often and you’ll be ignored, but if you are thought­ful, con­sid­er­ate, and right to the point, it can become a strong com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool. 

But wait! Isn’t tex­ting too personal?

I hear that con­cern a lot, and total­ly under­stand it. In this day and age, how­ev­er, tex­ting is not as inva­sive as you might think. Peo­ple are used to get­ting reminders, con­fir­ma­tions, and noti­fi­ca­tions. A per­son­al­ized, infre­quent text from your busi­ness won’t be offen­sive to the major­i­ty (there will always be a hand­ful who won’t be a fan, but that’s life). 

Tex­ting Tools for Your Con­trac­tor Business

There are a grow­ing num­ber of soft­ware com­pa­nies who offer SMS review services. 

Web­foot Paint­ing, for exam­ple, has a cus­tom plat­form one of their staff mem­bers devel­oped that sends both an email and text when a job is com­plet­ed. They have increased their online reviews by leaps and bounds since they imple­ment­ed the tex­ting fea­ture back in August of 2019 (if you are inter­est­ed in their sys­tem, shoot me an email). 

You can also look into soft­ware like TextMag­ic, Snap21, TextLine, Bright­Lo­cal, Bird­Eye, or Podi­um to name a few that offer SMS reviews.

If you are inter­est­ed in explor­ing more ways your com­pa­ny can increase your num­ber of online reviews, feel free to reach out to me.