These days it is so easy for customers to rate and review your pet sitting business online. They can leave reviews on Google Maps, at online yellow pages sites, on notice and chat boards, and on directories such as Craigs List, Angies List, Citysearch, and Yelp.
As part of your weekly business marketing you should be checking in to see what your customers are saying about you online. To check up you can do a Google search on your business name and it’s also a good idea to also do a Google search on your own name if you are the business owner. What you find may surprise you!
It’s a great welcome surprise when you find that your customers leave glowing reviews and tell other users how your sitting business provided great care for their pets. Make sure that you thank these customers with a personal note.
It’s not so great when you find comments from disgruntled customers that leave negative comments at these sites. Sometimes these negative reviews may even distort the facts or give a skewed view of the actual events.
You need to be very careful leaving responses to these negative reviews. The first course of action you take should be to contact the customer if you know who left the comment. Try to rectify the situation with them and ask if they will remove the negative review or update with another review that outlines how you have fixed their greivance.
If you can’t contact the customer make sure you leave a very reasonable, level-headed response that leaves an apology, outlines what occured and then describes the policies you have put in place in your business that will make sure that a similar situation will not happen again in the future.
If you are not checking the internet regularly and searching for online reviews and comments on forums – then you may miss the opportunity to thank a customer, or respond to a customer attack. You don’t want to leave a negative review online for potential customers to read as you may be losing customers without even realizing why.
It’s not a bad idea to suggest to your customers to leave reviews online if you know that they are happy with your service. Positive reviews can give you a competative advantage over other pet sitting services in your area.
I agree with the follow up process to resolve the negative comment. Bad news travels fast and any business does need this posted on the Internet which is embedded for life. My site has a review link and that’s the last thing I need to worry about… Great info!
thats a great point you raise, yes you need to know fast what people are saying about you if you run any pet business as so much depends on word-of mouth, and people’s opinions and recommendations.
But a good business or website should enable criticism or contact to be dealt with immediately, in-house…
Hi Matt – yes you are right. You should have a follow up system in your business to alert you of customer dissatifaction with your service as soon as it occurs so that you can rememdy the situation. A follow up survey that is sent after visits are completed is a good way of achieving this.
Hi Matt, I believe a follow up survey is important but also make sure you have one on your website with an incentive for your customer to fill it out.