Happy Calls and Reviews—the Building Blocks of Brand

When things are busy, it’s easy to forget about the importance of reputation and reviews. “Repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers.” This quote from cosmetic magnate Elizabeth Arden certainly applies to your HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or other home services company.

Building Your Brand and Reputation

Establishing your brand is a cornerstone of marketing and how your customers and the public perceive your identity—how it’s distinguished from everyone else—is essential to boosting your reputation. Understanding the pieces you need to build your reputation and having a process in place to drive consistency are critical to your success.

One thing is certain: as needs increase in the home services industry, that translates to more opportunity to visit your customers’ homes and keep your brand there.

Happy Calls Give Happy Results

One way for you to bring your company’s brand to your customers’ homes is to consistently make Happy Calls—no matter what season it is. A Happy Call is a follow-up call your office team makes to customers after they’ve had one or more of your technicians at their home working.

As a general practice, your technicians should leave behind brand- and reputation-building information after working a job. A few suggestions are company magnets, review cards, and both maintenance-program and referral information. All this helps lay the foundation for your team’s Happy Call. 

During the call, your team can confirm the customer’s satisfaction and prompt them to follow through on a review and other promotions that were left behind. On the other hand, if your customer is dissatisfied about something, this is the time to address it and resolve the scenario. Take advantage of the opportunity to be a hero and turn things around to make a happy customer.

One of the keys to successful Happy Calls is consistency. Make it your company process to routinely follow up with customers within 24 hours of a service call or installation. Part of building your reputation, i.e., brand, has a lot to do with your customers having a high level of trust in your relationship. Happy Calls show your customers you care and are invested in your partnership with them.

The Power of Reviews

Reviews. Reviews. Reviews. They’re worth mentioning three times—they’re that important. Reviews are considered the new word of mouth and play a large role in your reputation and brand.

It’s imperative you have a strategy in place to acquire reviews at every turn. We recommend focusing on two types of reviews—your website first-party reviews and Google reviews. This said, keep in mind not all reviews are created equal for all purposes.

When done properly, first-party website reviews can improve your site’s ranking. How? It has to do with the structure of the actual review—utilizing service cities and service types that users are looking for on search engines.

Simply having the review on your site is not enough. It needs to be structured in a way that allows Google to permit the review itself to rank. The website reviews increase the number of keywords on your site as well as how consistently they appear there. BxB’s review system is built specifically to do this, letting your website rank better. 

Take a look at the graph below. It illustrates one of our client’s upturn in rankings from July/August to September/October. The only change made during that short juncture was switching focus from Google reviews to onsite website reviews. Great results, and their ranking continued to rise.

One way to encourage building your site reviews’ numbers is to get your whole team involved. Offer spiffs and prizes. Reward your technicians for getting reviews while they’re with the customers. Give your office team members spiffs and prizes for obtaining reviews during Happy Calls. Make it fun.

Make Your Reputation the Core of Your Marketing Strategies

We all can get hyperfocused on certain aspects of our businesses and neglect other facets, especially during busy times. Making building your company’s reputation a regular part of your business strategy can help ensure it’s always at top of mind for your team.

As the earlier quote reminds us, repetition makes reputation. Consistency is king. 

If you are already working with a BxB Marketing Coach, discuss your ongoing strategy for building your brand on your next call. Conversely, if you aren’t currently working with a BxB Marketing Coach and you would like to talk to us about building your brand and a relationship, connect with us today!