Automatic customer review outreach

Hey all --

My team is getting ready to release a tool that reaches out to your customers automatically to ask for a review. Positive feedback returns a prompt to review on Google and Yelp. Negative feedback is caught and an autoresponder asks them to contact you to discuss. It's a great way to boost your online reputation without much effort. It works standalone and can also integrate with your shop management software. When you close a ticket it can automatically trigger the outreach cycle. 

As an ASO member you can use it for free for 3 months. No credit card required. 

Check it out. Feature requests and feedback always welcome -- RepCaster.com

Use invite code ASO2023

Nice!  I'm currently doing this with a different tool.   However, I can DEFINITELY say that asking for reviews works.   Just this morning a new customer said "WOW, you have great reviews!"  Good reviews help.   We send a text message to see how it went and if bad we don't ask for a review.  Then a few days later, they get a text message asking for a review.  We are being flooded with reviews.     I was previously using (still using) a Survey that would then prompt for a review, but they filled out the survey and thought it was doing us a favor and thus never getting to Google.  Had this for years, but it worked poorly overall. 

Your pricing is very affordable.  

53 minutes ago, bantar said:

Nice!  I'm currently doing this with a different tool.   However, I can DEFINITELY say that asking for reviews works.   Just this morning a new customer said "WOW, you have great reviews!"  Good reviews help.   We send a text message to see how it went and if bad we don't ask for a review.  Then a few days later, they get a text message asking for a review.  We are being flooded with reviews.     I was previously using (still using) a Survey that would then prompt for a review, but they filled out the survey and thought it was doing us a favor and thus never getting to Google.  Had this for years, but it worked poorly overall. 

Your pricing is very affordable.  

I found in the past that this tends to generate a lot of one and two line/sentence reviews. I found organic reviews, ones that are not requested, tend to end up with longer, paragraph or two, of a review. I worry that these requested reviews that generate one line responses flood out the really good, heartfelt reviews that propagate organically. take a look at your reviews, when you sort by relevant, you see those long, heartfelt reviews that have photos. When you sort by newest, you see the one and two line reviews I am talking about.

Also, just because you get to choose if they leave you a review or not, does not mean you are filtering out bad reviews. See, when you remind someone of their visit, you may be reaching them at a more convenient time for them to leave a review, and they may say, Oh yeah I remember this bad experience, I meant to run online to google and talk about it.

So while you may now have 500 reviews, you have the same 4.7 rating as I do, and it looks like a bunch or Russian bots are leaving fake one sentence positive reviews about your business. Just my two cents, and I am sure I am very wrong in my thinking.

21 hours ago, Hands On said:

So while you may now have 500 reviews, you have the same 4.7 rating as I do, and it looks like a bunch or Russian bots are leaving fake one sentence positive reviews about your business. Just my two cents, and I am sure I am very wrong in my thinking.

I hear you and don't disagree.  However, we have enough reviews with meat that you can get a taste of our service offerings.  

Aside from a few employees (and one other) leaving me reviews in the past, all of my reviews are organic.    The other was some Chinese bot leaving me a review about tires, which we don't do.  I left a gracious note thanking her and saying it was a misplaced review, but, hey, it was a free 5 Star Review.    We ask in person as well.   I have two employees who are in a friendly competition to see who gets mentioned in the reviews the most.   They are among the most genuine people you'd ever meet, so people naturally respond to them.    I try to respond to everyone personally, but they've been overwhelming me lately.

I recently received 2 bad reviews:  1) Failing a car for a braking problem on a State Inspection (and he went to a brake specialty store near me who passed him) and 2) For not working for free on a car with rusted tie rods that would not budge and he didn't want to replace.  You didn't finish the alignment, so it should be free.   It takes 25 5 star reviews to counter one 1 star review.   So, volume is helpful when you have to deal with these bad actors.   The majority of my 1 star reviews did not spend any money with us.  Won't give a phone quote, 1 star for you!

Having a good Google star rating saves you money if you are spending on Google ads.   You pay less pay-per-click to get a higher position when you have good reviews, so tending this farm is valuable.

But, back on the software, many people are well meaning and would want to leave you a review, but they get on with life and forget.  We are gently prodding them. 

I had long-ago boss, now a customer, tell me, write me what you want to say and I'll post that!  So, I used that to play around with ChatGPT.  I had it write a few reviews about me and sent him some items to choose from.  Don't think he followed thru though.  It was a fun exercise.

22 hours ago, Hands On said:

Also, just because you get to choose if they leave you a review or not, does not mean you are filtering out bad reviews. See, when you remind someone of their visit, you may be reaching them at a more convenient time for them to leave a review, and they may say, Oh yeah I remember this bad experience, I meant to run online to google and talk about it.

Oh, you just don't understand the business "dirty" (maybe better said manipulative) tricks at play here.  Two different software packages, two different schemes, but both are (trying to) filter out the bad reviews.

1) Send out survey and ask for a rating.  If they give a positive response (4 or 5), send them to Google or Yelp.  If they give a negative response, give them a survey instead.  They type up their hate-mail in the survey and we also ask if we can contact them.  Either way, they get the hate out of their system and feel like they have accomplished something and don't typically go on to Google.   However, sometimes, their hate is well deserved because we were wrong.   That's when we pick up the phone and apologize or fix whatever is wrong.   Sometimes, our price was "too high" and they needed to vent.

2) Using Texts, send out a query, Thank you for visiting.   I hope we did a great job for you.   If we get back a negative response, we either reach back out to them to address the problem, or if they are a hater, we manually take them off of the list for Google Reviews.   4 days later, they get sent another text asking for a review.    With automation, we send out 100-150 texts (generic time-based reminders, thank you's, Google reviews, appointment reminders) daily to customers and get back many responses.   It feels personalized to the customers.  We get overwhelming positivity from this program and the occasional hater.  The generic reminders are driving service.  I was VERY NERVOUS when turning on this program.   I expected a lot of push-back and yet it's quite the opposite.

Now, proving your point, my 1 Star review noted above, with the rusted tie rod ends, he didn't wait for us to prod him.   He went straight to Google.  Later when we texted him, he called us out there too.  Right now, I'm contesting a CC Chargeback from him too.  

When the software hands your customer a 1 click link to the review site, it gets used more often.   It's not terrible, because no one is making anyone do a review.    It is of their own choice.

One more story.  I had a lady text me after her service this week saying Thank you and that Carl need to be given a raise.  I replied with a easy-to-click link for Google and said that Carl likes to see his name in the Google reviews.   5 minutes later, she texted me that it was posted.   I show these to Carl because he thrives on positive feedback.   I save the really good/fun ones and print them out for him to take home.