Today, more patients than ever use online physician reviews to search for a doctor—and that number is only continuing to grow. In 2013, Software Advice published the results of a survey we conducted in an effort to learn more about how patients use online reviews. One year later, we’re revisiting the topic to see how patients’ use of online reviews has evolved, and what new conclusions can be drawn.
Key Findings:
- The number of patients using online reviews jumped 68 percent from 2013 to 2014.
- Nearly half of respondents would go out-of-network for a doctor that has more favorable reviews.
- Yelp is the most popular online review site (27 percent), but ties with HealthGrades for most trusted.
More Patients Using Online Reviews in 2014
One of the most important findings from our survey is that significantly more patients are using online reviews. In 2013, we found that just 25 percent of respondents said they used online reviews. A 2012 survey by Dr. David Hanauer at the University of Michigan, meanwhile, found that just 22 percent said they had used online reviews once or more.
In 2014, however, this percentage jumped to 42 percent—marking a 68 percent increase from 2013. The degree to which patients use these reviews varies, however: 24 percent reported using them “often” or “sometimes,” while 18 percent reported using them “rarely.”
Patients’ Frequency of Using Review Sites
Good Reviews Nearly as Important as Being In-Network
In addition to a significant jump in the number of patients using online reviews, another statistic that points to the growing importance of reviews sites is that nearly half of respondents (44 percent) said they would consider going to an out-of-network doctor if their reviews were better than those of in-network doctors.
Willingness to Go Out-of-Network Based on Reviews
This is a significant change from 2013, when just 26 percent of respondents said they’d be willing to go out-of-network because of more favorable reviews. The shift in patient sentiment here seems to reflect a growing reliance on online physician reviews over other factors when selecting a healthcare provider.
Consulting an out-of-network doctor is no small inconvenience to a patient, either through increased out-of-pocket expenses, time and effort required to change insurance providers or general uncertainty about fees and coverage. As such, the fact that nearly half of respondents would consider such a change based on reviews speaks to just how big of a role such reviews can play in a patient’s decision.
As Dr. Hanauer notes, “In many ways, the longer reviews remain on reviews sites and the more people leave them, the more ‘valuable’ they become as an information asset.”
Yelp Is Most Used Site; Healthgrades and RateMDs a Close Second
Next, we wanted to learn which websites respondents use most frequently to leave or consult reviews. Yelp secured the top spot, used by 27 percent of respondents, while Healthgrades and RateMDs each came in at 26 percent.
Most Used Review Sites
It’s important to note that, while Rate MDs was not included as a choice in our 2013 survey, it makes a strong showing in 2014. In fact, this year’s results are marked by increased parity among the top three online review sites, which collectively account for 79 percent of respondents’ choices.
This data suggests that doctors who diversify their online presence and list themselves on multiple sites may have an advantage over their colleagues in both attracting new patients and retaining existing ones.
As Dr. Tara Lagu of Baystate Medical Center notes, “Online patient-generated content is here to stay—so we might as well use it to make ourselves better doctors. I recommend physicians encourage their patients to leave reviews and regularly examine their ‘digital footprint’ as part of maintaining their online reputation.”
Yelp and Healthgrades Are Most Trusted Reviews Sites
In 2013, Yelp was overwhelmingly the most trusted site for online physician reviews, at 44 percent. This year, however, Healthgrades has pulled even with Yelp, with both sites accounting for 26 percent of respondents.
As previously noted, Rate MDs was not included in last year’s survey. In 2014, however, 24 percent believe it to be the most trustworthy site.
Most Trusted Review Sites
According to Hanauer, many patients are hesitant to trust the reviews they read online because such a small percentage of patients leave reviews. “The anonymous nature of [reviews] also makes it hard to know who left the ratings or to understand their underlying motivations,” he adds.
While anonymity with respect to physician reviews is and will likely remain a reality due to privacy concerns, increasing the percentage of patients who write reviews can significantly impact the perceived trustworthiness of those reviews. Hanauer’s study, for example, found that just 5 percent of patients leave physician reviews online, meaning there is significant room for improvement in this area.
Most Patients Use Online Reviews Prior to Choosing Physician
Next, we wanted to learn when patients are most likely to use online reviews. Our survey found that the majority (61 percent) use them prior to choosing a doctor. However, a slightly greater percentage of patients in 2014—20 percent, up from 19 percent in 2013—say they use online reviews to evaluate their current doctor.
When Patients Use Online Reviews
While this finding may or may not indicate a trend towards greater reevaluation of current physicians, we do know the current healthcare climate is more patient-centric today, with a greater emphasis on the patient as consumer. As such, it would make sense that more patients are using reviews not only to evaluate new doctors, but also as a barometer to gauge the quality of their existing care.
Doctors should be aware that both current and new patients may be using reviews to evaluate their performance, and thus having a positive online presence on review sites is a step toward not just attracting patients, but retaining them.
Quality of Care Remains Most Valuable Information
The increasing importance of online reviews correlates with another trend: for the second year, quality of care is the information patients value most, cited by 48 percent of respondents. In second place is patient rating scores, cited by 45 percent of respondents, followed closely by the overall patient experience, at 40 percent.
Less important information to respondents included practice demographics and the appearance of the doctor’s office, which were cited by 25 and 11 percent, respectively.
Most Sought-After Information (General)
To benefit most from this data, doctors should consider encouraging patients to rate the quality of care they receive. This can be done by sending patients email reminders with a link to the physician’s online profiles asking them to leave a review. There are also reputation management services, such as MyPracticeReputation that advise physicians on strategies to improve their online presence.
Ultimately, however, the best way to ensure good reviews is for doctors to think of patients as consumers. Patients can, and will, choose the healthcare provider that appeals to them most, which means doctors must strive to provide the best care possible to win their business.
Accuracy of Diagnosis Most Important Delivery of Care Information
When it comes to what delivery of care information patients value most in reviews, this year’s results were very similar to 2013: accurate diagnoses (34 percent) and a doctor’s listening skills (22 percent) took the top two spots.
Most Sought-After Information (Delivery of Care)
Due to the exorbitant costs of healthcare today, an inaccurate diagnosis can have extremely negative effects on a patient’s finances and cause tremendous undue stress and mental anguish. As such, it’s not surprising that an accurate diagnosis ranks most highly.
Similarly, good listening and communication skills have long been a crucial element of effective healthcare, so much so that bedside manner has been a focus of the of practice good medicine since the classical world. In fact, some suggest that the quality of the doctor-patient relationship has a direct effect on patients’ health, as improving communication skills can lead to a better understanding of a patient’s well-being, thus increasing the accuracy of diagnoses and improving overall health.
In terms of administrative information, 25 percent of respondents cited wait times as most important, which was likewise the most sought-after information in 2013. This isn’t surprising; as prior Software Advice research found that 41 percent would consider switching doctors if it meant reduced wait times.
Staff friendliness came in second, at 22 percent, while ease of scheduling and billing/payment issues came in at 19 and 16 percent, respectively. These results suggest that, as the notion of patients as consumers continues to proliferate, customer service is, and will continue to become, more important.
Most Sought-After Information (Administrative)
Most Reviewers Share Positive or Neutral Reviews
A common concern among physicians is exposing themselves to scrutiny or negative reviews online. According to Hanauer, “The concern is that the negative reviews are probably disproportionate to the number of negative experiences patients have. Even if ‘only’ 19 percent of online reviews are negative, we as clinicians would hope that far fewer than one out of five patients had a negative experience.”
Yet, when asked what kind of review they typically write about their doctor, patients’ responses were quite different than what one might expect: 43 percent of respondents say they usually write something positive, while another 28 percent say their responses tend to be neutral.
Type of Review Patients Typically Write
As it turns out, others have found a similar trend in online reviews of physicians, and the University of Michigan study found that 81 percent of respondents typically gave positive or neutral reviews of doctors online. In each of these surveys, it’s clear that patients generally tend to focus on the positive aspects of care over negative experiences.
As further evidence, one only has to look at the motivations of patients writing reviews. In our survey, 32 percent of respondents cited helping other patients, while 30 percent said sharing a positive experience was their primary incentive for leaving a review.
Patients’ Top Motivation for Writing Reviews
Patients Focus on Positive When Choosing Doctors
In addition to reviews being largely positively motivated, we found that those who use reviews to choose a doctor overwhelmingly use positive reviews when making a decision: 85 percent of respondents said they’d be at least “moderately likely” to choose one doctor over another based on positive reviews. This indicates patients actively seek out positive healthcare experiences, rather than merely avoiding negative ones.
Likelihood of Choosing a Doctor Based on Positive Reviews
Our data also suggests that patients reading reviews are savvy enough to ignore what they consider “exaggerated” reviews. In fact, 34 percent cited “exaggerated reviews” as the primary reason for disregarding a review—more so than any other reason—indicating that patients are perceptive about negative reviews, and can tell a valid complaint from an overreaction.
Most Common Reasons for Disregarding Reviews
This information should allay physician fears regarding negative reviews. Reviews tend to be positively motivated and interpreted, and thus, proactively encouraging patients to leave good reviews is far more a benefit than a risk.
Should a negative review appear, however, Lagu suggests that physicians “respond if possible, make improvements when possible and remember that most Internet users are savvy and consider online content with caution and in the context of other reviews.” She adds, ”The best response to a negative review is the presence of many more positive reviews from other patients.”
Conclusions
Our survey findings indicate that having online profiles and positive patient reviews is not only desirable for physicians, but may soon become a necessity to attract and retain patients, particularly as the healthcare arena becomes increasingly patient-centric.
Physicians should also keep in mind that negative reviews are not nearly as prevalent as many think. Those that do occur, however, should be responded to very carefully in order to protect patient anonymity (and remain in compliance with HIPAA). Most reviews are positively motivated, so focusing on increasing the quality of care via improved diagnostic accuracy and listening skills is, according to our data, the best way to ensure a greater number of positive reviews.
Methodology
To find the data in this report, we surveyed a sample of 4,620 patients in the United States, collecting a minimum of 385 responses for each question. We worded the questions to ensure that each respondent fully understood their meaning and the topic at hand.
Sources attributed and products referenced in this article may or may not represent partner vendors of Software Advice, but vendor status is never used as a basis for selection. Interview sources are chosen for their expertise on the subject matter, and software choices are selected based on popularity and relevance.
Expert commentary solely represents the views of the individual. Chart values are rounded to the nearest whole number.
If you have comments or would like to obtain access to any of the charts above, please contact kathleenirwin@softwareadvice.com.
Many individuals turn to online reviews websites, such as Yelp and Zagat, in order to evaluate the best available food options when they want to dine out. But online reviews aren’t limited to restaurants—those seeking legal assistance also have many options to choose from that allow them to compare attorneys on the Web.
Since people often seek legal counsel when a private, serious matter occurs, online reviews provide an easy, confidential way to evaluate attorneys. To learn which legal reviews sites individuals are using, how they’re using them and what they’re looking for, we surveyed a random sample of adults in the U.S. We collected 385 unique responses to each of nine questions, giving us a total of 3,465 respondents.
Key Findings:
- Yelp is the most popular and trusted website for legal reviews.
- The most important information to prospective clients is quality of service and years of legal experience.
- Seventy percent of prospective clients would travel further to see an attorney with better online reviews.
Yelp Is the Most Popular and Trusted Website
Yelp is the most commonly used site to search for attorney reviews online—58 percent of respondents in our sample said it was the first place they turn. It’s also the website that 61 percent of users view as the most trustworthy.
Most Popular Websites for Attorney Reviews
Most Trusted Websites for Attorney Reviews
As such, lawyers should make sure their Yelp profile is completely filled out and updated frequently to display the most accurate information possible.
Prospective Clients Use Online Reviews as an Initial Step
When it comes to how prospective clients use these review sites, the vast majority (83 percent) said they do so as their first step to find an attorney.
Only 9 percent use online reviews to evaluate an attorney they’ve already retained, while 8 percent do so to validate an attorney they’ve tentatively selected prior to scheduling a consultation.
Top Reasons Clients Use Online Reviews
This data indicates that attorney review sites could be an effective marketing channel for your firm, helping new clients find you and determine if your practice is the best fit for their legal needs.
This means it’s important to respond politely and constructively to any criticism posted on your firm’s Yelp page to resolve any potential issues and ensure you’re presenting a good first impression to clients.
Clients Most Interested in Quality of Service
When it comes to the type of information clients investigate when visiting legal review sites, 48 percent of respondents in our sample cited the quality of service provided as most important.
The overall ratings score (e.g. four out of five stars) was also important, with 38 percent of prospective clients ranking this among the most essential information they look for on reviews sites.
Top Information Clients Look for in Online Reviews
A key takeaway from this data is the importance of providing great service to your clients—enough so that they’re motivated to mention this in an online review.
As mentioned above, it’s also essential to constructively respond to negative comments to help keep your overall ratings high. Most sites, Yelp included, permit you to publicly respond to negative reviews.
Of course, lawyers have confidentiality concerns that other businesses don’t, which can make responding appropriately more challenging. This article provides tips on how attorneys can safely address negative online reviews.
Clients Want Attorneys to Clearly Explain Their Legal Options
When asked what the most important information about an attorney’s quality of service is, 33 percent of respondents in our sample said how well the attorney explains their legal options to them. Twenty-seven percent are curious about an attorney’s win/loss record—though that information can be misleading and hard to find.
Most Important Information About Quality of Service
Experience Is Most Important Demographic Information
The most important demographic information prospective clients seek is the years of experience an attorney has: 48 percent of respondents cited this as the first thing they look for on reviews websites.
Nineteen percent say certifications are most important, while 16 percent cite education as paramount. Age and gender are most important to 7 and 6 percent of respondents, respectively.
Most Important Demographic Information
These data points emphasize the importance of ensuring that online review sites are up-to-date with how long you’ve been practicing law and what certifications you hold. If you’re a younger or less-experienced attorney, be sure to highlight your education and certifications.
Responsiveness Is Most Important Administrative Information
On the administrative front, prospective clients are primarily turning to online review sites to locate information about how responsive an attorney is (39 percent) and how well they handle billing and payment issues (23 percent).
Friendliness of legal staff is most important to 16 percent of online review users in our sample, while 13 percent seek information about how easy it is to schedule appointments.
Somewhat surprisingly, only 7 percent of respondents said they cared about the type of office you have—i.e. whether consultations take place in a more traditional setting with an attorney sitting behind a mahogany desk, or the attorney’s “office” is a coffee shop.
Most Important Administrative Information
These findings emphasize the importance of instituting a rapid response policy for all client communication at your firm, both current and prospective. They also suggest it may not be worth splurging on lavish office furniture as a means of impressing clients.
70 Percent of Clients Will Commute for Better Reviews
A whopping 70 percent of respondents in our sample said they would consider going to an attorney in an inconvenient part of town if he or she had better online reviews than one closer to home. This certainly speaks to the importance of positive reviews in attracting new clients.
Willingness to Commute for Better Reviews
43 Percent of Clients Use Online Reviews to Research Lawyers
Forty-three percent of prospects say they use online reviews to research attorneys. While this is significantly less than how many consumers use online reviews to choose a restaurant, it’s higher than the percent of patients using online reviews to research doctors, and is still a significant portion of potential clients that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Percent Using Legal Reviews
Low-Income, Rural Clients Least Likely to Use Reviews Sites
According to The Center for Public Integrity, “Every major survey has shown that the lower the income, the less likely it is that households will subscribe to the Internet.” So it’s not surprising that the lowest income bracket in our sample was the least likely to use online reviews—probably due in part to lack of Internet access and inability to afford a private attorney.
However, our research found that the likelihood of legal clients to use online reviews increased only up to an annual income of $49,000 per year—this likelihood decreased among those making $50,000 and more.
This is in contrast to our (previously cited) survey of medical patients using online reviews—their likelihood of using online reviews increased steadily with income levels. One explanation for this may be that many affluent clients already have an attorney they or their family consistently use, or they might rely on their wealthy peers for attorney recommendations instead of the Web.
Demographics: Clients Using Reviews by Income
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the persistent lack of access to high-speed Internet among rural residents, urban and suburban prospects are much more likely to use online reviews than those in rural areas.
Demographics: Clients Using Reviews by Urbanicity
Clients in the 25-34 age bracket are significantly more likely than other age ranges to use online reviews. This makes sense, given that this Pew Research Center study indicates individuals in this age range are the most likely to use the Internet.
Demographics: Clients Using Reviews by Age
Conclusions
Having a powerful presence on legal reviews sites can help you attract new clients. An effective way to increase your online review presence is to ask current clients to leave reviews for you. Consider asking clients to leave a review after you’ve had a positive in-person consultation with them, or after their case has been favorably settled.
Asking specifically for reviews from clients in the demographics most likely to use reviews sites may also be useful. For example, since you know that age is correlated with likelihood to use reviews, you might focus on garnering reviews from clients aged 25-44.
You could also institute a client onboarding process that asks how they heard about your practice. Those who found you through an online review site may be more likely to leave a review given their familiarity with these resources, so be sure to ask for one.
To further discuss this report or obtain access to any of the charts above, feel free to contact me at chantelle@softwareadvice.com.
To learn more, Software Advice surveyed residential service customers to determine how they use online reviews sites to select residential service companies. The findings, along with commentary from industry experts, will help these companies better understand the impact of reviews sites and how they can maximize their online presence in order to attract the business of both new and existing customers.
Key Findings:
- Eighty-six percent of respondents would pay more for a residential service provider with higher ratings and reviews.
- A majority of respondents (68 percent) say they find online reviews to be “extremely” or “very valuable” when evaluating residential service providers.
- The most important information respondents look for in online reviews is the quality of service provided (87 percent) and cost (78 percent).
- Fifty-six percent of respondents say they used online resources to find their most recent residential service provider.
- The majority (74 percent) of respondents in our sample consult Yelp when selecting a residential service provider.
Introduction
Consulting online reviews has become an integral part of the modern consumer’s buying process. A recent study from Dimensional research found that the buying decisions of 90 percent of respondents who read online reviews were influenced by positive reviews, while 86 percent were influenced by negative reviews.
“With the rise of social media and online reviews sites, consumers are talking about local businesses on the Internet more than ever before,” says Morgan Remmers, manager of local business outreach at online reviews giant Yelp.
“This kind of third-party validation in the form of consumer reviews is something that many people rely on when looking for a business these days, because it isn’t something a business can control like they can with traditional marketing and paid advertisements.”
Though Remmers points out the lack of control that businesses have with online reviews sites, there are still best practices for recruiting more (and better) reviews, as well as for creating and managing an online presence for your business. This report will outline some of these best practices and help residential service business owners realize the importance of cultivating a positive presence on online reviews sites.
Many Would Pay More for Well-Reviewed Service Provider
Our most compelling finding for business owners is that an overwhelming majority of respondents say they would pay more for a service provider with higher rankings and better reviews, versus paying less for a provider that didn’t.
Willingness to Pay More for Providers With Positive Reviews
In all, 86 percent of respondents said they would pay more, to some degree, for a service provider with more positive reviews. Clearly, there is real revenue-generating potential for businesses with positive online reviews.
“Consumers highly value their dollars spent, and are typically willing to pay a higher price for what they believe is a better service or product,” explains Chris Sullens, CEO of Marathon Data Systems.
“Word of mouth has [been], and always will be, one of the strongest points of persuasion for consumers; now it is just digitized, and they trust what other consumers have to say more than any marketing material they might see.”
Software solutions that provide residential service business management functions can have a positive impact on the reviews customer leave for businesses.
“Businesses [using this software] can spend less time worrying about daily operations and tasks, and spend more time on building relationships with their customers and improving satisfaction—which ultimately will lead to a higher willingness to leave positive reviews for the business,” says Sullens.
Ninety-Six Percent Find Online Reviews Moderately to Extremely Valuable
In understanding how customers use online reviews to find residential service providers, we thought it’d be prudent to determine just how valuable these reviews are to customers.
Value of Reviews in Evaluating Residential Service Provider
It turns out that a majority of respondents do indeed value reviews when evaluating and selecting a residential service provider. In fact, 25 percent find the reviews “extremely valuable” for this purpose, and 43 percent find them “very valuable.” Another 28 percent of respondents find reviews “moderately valuable.”
Sullens says the value of these online reviews stems from the snapshots they provide of businesses’ relationships with their customers.
“Putting an emphasis on customer relationships can certainly help,” he says. “If a business consistently provides high-quality services, competitive pricing and quote accuracy, positive word-of-mouth from satisfied customers will come easily.”
An October 2014 report by Software Advice examining how software buyers use online reviews further exemplifies the value consumers place in online reviews. This report found a combined 68 percent of respondents indicate that online reviews are either “extremely” or “very valuable” when making a software purchase. Additionally, almost 30 percent found reviews “moderately valuable,” whereas only 2 percent found them “minimally valuable.”
To see if there is a difference in how males and females perceive online reviews, we broke down the previous chart by gender:
Value of Reviews in Evaluating Residential Service Provider by Gender
While there are some similarities in how the two demographics value online reviews, a much larger percentage of women find online reviews “extremely valuable” compared to their male counterparts (36 versus 17 percent, respectively). As such, business owners should strive to include positive reviews in any advertisements targeted at women, and should make an effort to recruit reviews from this demographic.
Customers Primarily Seek Quality of Service, Cost in Online Reviews
Now that we know the value potential customers place in online reviews, we next wanted to know what specific information they seek when evaluating residential service providers.
Information Sought in Residential Service Provider Reviews
Among respondents in our sample, 87 percent look for information on the quality of services provided, while 78 percent seek pricing and cost information. These are two crucial elements that could sway potential customers towards or away from choosing to do business with a given provider.
While business owners can’t control what information people choose to include in their reviews, they can control what information is listed on their company profile on online reviews sites such as Yelp. According to Remmers, when it comes to what businesses can do to improve their online profiles, the more information a consumer has when making a buying decision, the better:
Be sure to add your website and business hours, as well as a 3,000-character description about the services you offer. Adding photos is highly recommended. In fact, people searching Yelp stay on a business page with photos two and a half times longer than one without. Photos of your friendly staff and before [and] after photos of work you’ve completed are a good start.Morgan Remmers, Yelp
She also encourages businesses to utilize Yelp Deals, which are essentially pre-paid coupons that businesses can send to encourage customers to choose them over competitors. Yelp collects payment from the purchaser, and retains 30 percent of the purchase. Remmers says these are great ways to attract first-time customers as well as customers who are ready to make a decision on a provider, since they can do so directly from a Yelp business page.
Majority of Respondents Use Online Resources to Find Services
We began our survey by asking respondents how they found their most recent residential service provider. From this, we filtered out those who didn’t use online reviews, so that those answering the remaining questions had their online reviews experience fresh in their mind. Thus, the chart below represents every respondent who participated, whereas the rest of this report only refers to those who used reviews sites to choose their last provider.
Resource Used to Select Last Residential Service Provider
We found that 55 percent used online resources, such as reviews sites, search engines and Craigslist, to find their most recent residential service provider. The other 42 percent used traditional resources such as asking family and friends for referrals. Given a majority are using online resources, it’s crucial for businesses to develop an online presence, especially as it pertains to reviews sites.
Next, we drilled into those respondents that used online resources to select their most recent service provider. Search engines are the most popular means of selecting service providers online, cited by 56 percent. Not far behind are online reviews sites, cited by 38 percent.
Online Resource Used to Select Residential Service Provider
It’s important to note here that, while search engines are the most popular online means of selecting providers, many of the results these engines return are themselves for online reviews postings and websites.
To explore this further, we decided to examine how often online reviews sites appear on the first page of Google searches. We searched the term “plumber (city),” inputting the 30 most populous U.S. cities. Out of 300 results, 127, or 42 percent, were for general reviews sites or for specific postings within those sites.
This finding indicates that not only are online reviews beneficial in and of themselves, but having a strong online reviews presence can capture many potential customers searching for providers through other online channels, as well.
Yelp Is Most Popular Online Reviews Site
When we broke down our Google search results data on plumbers in the top 30 U.S. cities, we examined which online reviews sites the results corresponded with. The highest percentage (43 percent) was from Yelp.
“People are often surprised to hear that, of the 67 million reviews on Yelp (as of Q3 2014), only 20 percent of the reviewed businesses on Yelp are restaurants, and 11 percent of the reviewed businesses are in the home and local services category,” Remmers says.
We also determined which online reviews sites are most popular amongst our respondents.
Most Used Online Reviews Sites
Most Used Online Reviews Sites, by Service Type
The data shows Yelp as the most popular online reviews site for all the service segments in question. In fact, 74 percent of respondents consult Yelp when selecting a residential service; nearly 10 percent more than Google+ Local reviews, which is the second-most popular online reviews site.
Sullens, of Marathon Data Systems, was surprised to learn the amount of residential service business listings on Yelp.
“While it wouldn’t come as a surprise that Yelp outranks other review sites for business reviews in the restaurant and hospitality industry, it is a little surprising that it is number one for residential services,” he said.
If residential services businesses don’t have a Yelp profile, it would be wise to create one. It certainly can’t hurt to increase exposure to potential customers, and there are multiple success stories, specifically in the residential field services industry, from businesses that saw great returns upon utilizing their Yelp business page.
However, creating a Yelp profile is only the beginning of leveraging online reviews to drive revenue and increase exposure for businesses. As Remmers states (and as evidenced in this informative Wired article from April 2014), the best way for businesses to leverage online reviews is to thank positive reviewers and encourage them to refer their business to friends.
However, for small to midsize service businesses in particular, communication with reviewers who leave negative reviews in a must. Businesses should provide these unsatisfied customers with some restorative solutions to their pain points while at the same time being aware that there is simply no pleasing some customers.
Even still, data from our previously mentioned report found that when asked if a single negative online review would steer them away from a given software product, the majority (65 percent) of respondents said this was “not at all” or “minimally likely.” But when asked if a cluster of negative online reviews would steer them away from a given software product, 44 percent of respondents said it would. Businesses should keep this in mind when interacting with reviewers.
Conclusions
All the data from this report is only beneficial to the extent that it can be made actionable. Given that, residential services business owners are advised to claim their free business profile on Yelp and other reviews sites. They also need to actively monitor and communicate with their reviewers, both positive and negative.
On the other hand, business owners should consider integrating field service management software that connects all facets of their business. As Sullens says:
This integration and connectivity [provided by residential services management software] gives business owners, managers etc. the insight they need to make improvements within their business and create a better overall, end-to-end customer experience that makes it easier to turn those customers into true advocates and cheerleaders for the business.Chris Sullens, Marathon Data Systems
Methodology
To find the data in this report, we conducted a seven-day online survey of seven questions, and gathered 1,239 responses from random adults who have used residential services within the United States. All survey questionnaires undergo an internal peer review process to ensure clarity in wording.
Sources attributed and products referenced in this article may or may not represent partner vendors of Software Advice, but vendor status is never used as a basis for selection. Interview sources are chosen for their expertise on the subject matter, and software choices are selected based on popularity and relevance.
Expert commentary solely represents the views of the individual. Chart values are rounded to the nearest whole number.
If you have comments or would like to obtain access to any of the charts above, please contact justinguinn@softwareadvice.com.
The following image highlights the results of the baseline diagnostic, performed on March 6, 2015:
As a result, we instituted a program that successfully corrected all of the issues that were identified by the baseline diagnostic. The following image highlights the results of the same diagnostic, performed on June 2, 2015:
