Chasing a Better Motorist Experience, Build Trust With Customer Reviews

How important are customer reviews to motorists? Research shows that 90% of motorists read online reviews before visiting a shop, and 88% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. In addition to this, 68% form an opinion after reading between one and six online reviews.

This means that, in order to run your shop better and grow in today’s competitive, online-first marketplace, you need happy customers sharing positive reviews of their experiences in order to even get visitors to even look at your site for the first time.

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:00):
Shop Talk Radio. My name’s Tom Dorsey, I’ll be hosting the show today. Today is episode 20, June 19th, 2019, and today we’re going to be talking about reviews. We’ve been talking over the last, I’d say about six weeks. We’ve had some great shows about getting the team to adopt your digital inspection program, how to take great inspections that really are impactful and help you sell more work and some other really great shows on helping to get the process going and get it out there to the customer. And now we’re going to talk about, today, we’re going to talk a little bit about how to use that work and take it out there and help to influence your reviews, the number of reviews that you get, the type of reviews that you get, where you get reviews, and really put an awareness out there, generate a buzz and help you to attract new customers to your business and be able to use those digital inspection assets, pictures and videos, even if it’s just recommended, even if it’s just in type in the review to put that awareness out there to attract more customers to your business. So I’ve got two great guests with us today. I’ve got Joaquin Cordero, he’s joining us from 27th Street Automotive, tons and tons of great reviews and been a digital shop. Now how long Joaquin
(01:24):
Have
(01:26):
You been on? Tell us a little bit about where you
Joaquin Cordero (01:43):
We are seven to six people, three technicians, two service riders. And I still consider a small shop, but so far so good.
Tom Dorsey (01:54):
Yeah, no, we know you’re humble because we’ve seen your metrics, man, you guys kick butt over there. You guys are really running a great operation and you can really see how since you’ve adopted that digital platform, sales have taken off for you. Congratulations. And then also joining with us, we’ve got a great regular co-host back today with us. Fred Gestwicki from Fix-It with Fred. What’s up buddy?
Fred Gestwicki Jr (02:20):
Hey man, everything’s good in Canton in Ohio. We’re loving it. Yep.
Tom Dorsey (02:24):
Good, good. And couldn’t ask for anybody better to have on when we’re talking about innovative ways and outside of the box, thinking on how to use your reviews, how to use your digital inspections to leverage reviews, and then really how to think about ways to make it easy for a customer to leave reviews. So let’s kick it off right there. Maybe Fred, start us off. When do you set expectations and when do you really start planting the seeds to get a review from a customer?
Fred Gestwicki Jr (02:59):
Tom? It actually starts in the very beginning. When you get that new customer, your existing customer is much easier. They trust you, they know you, they come to you. So all you basically do is say, Hey, give me a review. And they go, okay, and then send ’em a link and it’s done. But those new customers are the ones that are hard to get a review out of. So when somebody finds you and you ask them, how did you find us? Oh, I found you online. Oh, okay, did you check out our website? Just kind of converse. And they say, yeah, I saw your reviews. So make a little note in your point of sale or note in however you track your customer’s info that this customer came from Google and they read reviews. So when you get near the end of the visit where you’re getting to the kiss goodbye or the final stage, customers, remember that last thing you say?
(03:42):
And for most shops, reviews are the best marketing method because it’s free and everyone looks at them. So tell ’em, you know how you read the review to find us. We’d appreciate if you would give us a review and don’t just give us a five star. Tell us if we didn’t do good, I’d like you to let me know what we did that didn’t produce a five star experience. And they’ll go, oh no, it was a great five star experience. Well tell the world how good we did. And when you ask them to describe it, you’re asking them to use those keywords, repair, inspection, breaks, whatever they had done. If they can use those words in their review, that raises your SEO helps you get more visibility. And when customers have a problem and they look at your shop and they consider you as a possible candidate to fix their vehicle, they want to find somebody that had a similar issue that has had a great experience so that they can walk in and be happy. I know you fixed breaks because I saw four reviews that talk about breaks. So you kind of make it where, put yourself in the new customer’s spot, you want to make them feel special. We do a couple things like that. That’s kind of how we attack that, Tom.
Tom Dorsey (04:51):
Hey, and would you even ask, because that’s a great point, right? And so right at Dropoff is really where I’m going to start maybe having that conversation and taking some notes. Would you even ask them, they say, Hey, we saw some, oh hey, do you use Yelp or are you on Facebook? Start to kind of narrow ’em down to where their platform is.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (05:10):
We outright ask ’em how we found you. Okay, how did you find us? And sometimes people are hesitant to tell you for whatever reason, oh, I found you online. So you don’t want to be like, what’d you use Google? What words did you type in? You don’t want to make ’em uncomfortable and analyze the customer. So we found just converse with ’em and if they just say online they don’t want to talk about it, try and bring it up again and be like, did one of your friends refer you? I’d like to thank that friend. You can do different things like that. But if they’re just diehard, I just want you to know I searched on the interwebs. Unfortunately, it’s all you get to know. So use what you just said, Tom, talk to ’em. Hey, we’re trying to get more Yelp reviews. Lucky for Fix-It with Fred Yelp means almost nothing where I’m at.
(05:52):
So I feel lucky that the mafia isn’t a big player where I live, but for us, Facebook right now we’re targeting Google. But for a while we ask people, well, could you recommend us on Facebook? Would you mind doing that? I would consider it a personal favor if you could do that. And sure enough, within two hours you get that recommendation. So you can guide the customer where your shop is looking to get a better online reputation. You just got a one star, you got to bury it with five stars. So point everybody in that same platform.
Tom Dorsey (06:19):
Oh man, that’s gold right there. Write that down because that’s exactly it. If you’re paying attention to your reviews, you see something that happens, Hey, two things, right? If somebody sees all five stars and then nothing ever bad happens in your, it’s you almost discount it. It’s fake stuff happens, get that. And it’s really do you respond? How do you respond? And then what else as far as waiting goes, one out of 101, okay, this is a great business and also a great point about if you ask, you can receive, right? It is a lot of times as simple as that. If somebody mentions their great man, this digital inspection was amazing, hey, would you mind telling your friends about that? And just ask them to mention the digital inspection. Because the more of that information you can get out there, the more awareness you generate, the more people understand the type of experience you’re going to get your culture through those reviews and get that phone ringing more often. Joaquin, are you guys doing the same thing in your shop? How do you kind of set up the customer to get reviews? I mean, you guys have a lot of great reviews online. Are you just relying on chance or maybe the CRM that your thank you email, or are you asking them to leave you reviews at pickup or drop off?
(07:50):
I think Joaquin got muted. Can you hear us buddy? Yeah,
Joaquin Cordero (07:55):
Sorry.
Tom Dorsey (07:56):
Oh, there you go.
Joaquin Cordero (07:58):
So every time that we have a chance, we ask for a review. Sometimes when we do free things for the customer and we ask for a review or when they seem to be happy or well, we also do follow up calls and the follow up calls. If something is wrong, we’ll take care of that or call them back and bring the card back. But if they’re happy, we just ask for a review and just any opportunity that we have, we ask for a review.
Tom Dorsey (08:30):
That’s fantastic. So you’re using AutoVitals to schedule some follow-up call campaigns after pickup. And then, so let me ask you this, do you see more reviews left after you do the follow-up call or would you be getting those reviews anyway?
Joaquin Cordero (08:48):
Well, I cannot really answer that question because I don’t track it, but that helps too. That helps a lot to get the feedback and also direct the customers to give us a review on Google or anywhere where they want it.
Tom Dorsey (09:06):
Yeah, exactly. And a lot of times it’s as easy as that. So take advantage of the situation as well is what Joaquin’s telling you right now, right? Somebody’s happy, somebody says, thank you for doing this extra mile. Hey, thank me. By maybe posting something up on Facebook and like what Fred was saying, when you know where you need reviews, ask for them to use those platforms and you know that you can go in and set a percentage thank you emails that will go out with a link to the review sites that you set in the backend in AutoVitals. And that’s just going to help you to cast a wider net out there, right? Get more awareness across multiple platforms. And if you look at it from a targeting perspective, I need more on Facebook or I’ve had maybe a bad review got posted over here on Yelp. Let me start sending some more that way to kind of bury those down, push ’em down the page and just show that we’ve got lots of other stories to tell Fred, what about responding to those reviews? I mean, everybody tends to get a negative review. About 80% of Americans responding to polls say that they trust online reviews over any other form of research. And as a matter of fact, they even trust user generated reviews more than say some professional review or critic. You know what I mean?
Fred Gestwicki Jr (10:36):
You brought up a couple of really awesome points. Many shop owners I know when you ask them how are you getting new customers? And they say referrals and word of mouth. And I know most of the time in their head their word of mouth is they’re picturing John, their customer, John, talking to their friend Tom and saying, you really ought to go over to the shop. And in reality in today’s world, word of mouth is reviews. That is today’s word of mouth. The millennial generation and the younger generation of younger than them both treat reviews more importantly than a person telling them. So for example, we were looking for a dentist for my wife. So we went online, asked for recommendations on Facebook, looked for who got the most recommendations, went to the reviews and the place we chose, there was two people specifically that said, don’t go there.
(11:26):
I had a bad experience, but there’s 14 people that said good. And the review said, good, so we are ignoring the bad review and choosing the place because we looked at their bad reviews and saw how they responded. So that’s today’s word of mouth advertising are those reviews. And when you get that bad review, can I go over what we do with that, Tom? Because I think everyone wants to know what do you do when you get that email and it’s a one and you’re like, oh my gosh, the first thing you do is freak out, get it all out, get all mad, yell, scream, throw stuff, do whatever gets it out. If you’re harboring it inside of you, it’s going to come out in your response. I got a one star review three weeks ago. I was so excited. Yeah, there’s my one star so excited for this because this guy’s got the wrong business.
(12:18):
He’s never contacted my shop. I’m sure of that because our phone log doesn’t have him in there. He’s not in the system. I looked on Facebook, can’t find the guy, I got nothing. So I was excited because now I have a one star review that I’m a mad because the guy doesn’t come to me, but I don’t have to be analyzing the situation. What did we do wrong? How did we fail this customer? So now I get to write a message to all of my potential new customers as to what Exactly. So when you get a one star, that’s a true, true one star, first thing you do is freak out, get it all out, get where you’re sweating and you’re okay now. And then call them, Hey, I saw you left me a one star review what’s going on? And just listen, don’t talk and let them get it out.
(13:02):
And myself, I only have two one star reviews that are legitimate and neither one of them will answer any response. So we tried, but in our 20 group, we have several members that have convinced the one star customer to change the review to a five star with a phone call, not giving them any free service, not giving ’em anything, just talking. But for our shop, the two fake one stars we have, I love them. And you can see my response. We’ve searched, we couldn’t find you, we checked our phone log and I explained to them specifically, we keep track of everyone that comes through our business and I have no record of who you are, no record of you ever calling, so please call me so that we can clear up this confusion. If you’re the potential new customer of a business and you go to a one star and you see this terrible thing where transmission fluid and this and that and the guy’s charging too much and then you read this response, what would you think? I would think they got the wrong place. Obviously this guy left the review for the wrong place.
Tom Dorsey (14:05):
Yeah, exactly. And you kind of let what happens there? Two things happen is every time you have an opportunity to respond in public that way, you have to look at it as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity. In this case, guy left it for the wrong business, but Fred could go out there and actually take care of this guy, maybe even offer assistance to help the guy find the right business or something and win him over as a customer.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (14:32):
We might work on his car if he actually called us, he might like what we’re doing. He just,
Tom Dorsey (14:36):
Exactly. It’s an opportunity to win this guy as a customer, right? By responding. The other thing is you’re talking to your current and future customer base there and it’s an opportunity for you to establish that you care because, and just like you were saying about the 20 groups that happens is that somebody will, they just want attention. You give me the attention in the selfie generation, go figure. Oh my gosh, I got recognition, I got my grievance, I got justice. And then they’re your best friend, they’re out there, five star review commending people to come to your business all of a sudden or it doesn’t work and hey, they stay angry, but the social mob will judge them. The social mob will say, that’s a kook. Let’s ignore what they say because they were unreasonable. And here’s this business owner that tried to reach out and engage and offer to help. And this person’s just a kook. So ignore, right. Joaquin, how are you responding to bad reviews if you ever get any?
Joaquin Cordero (15:43):
Well, yeah, we have a few, but basically it happened before the same way that Fred first just cooled down and sometimes we wait a couple days before we respond the review, and usually I talk about it when somebody that is no relate to the business. And so I gave me the point of view of the customer, maybe I’m seeing from the wrong point of view and just respond, being sorry for this situation and then we can do whatever we can to make it better or fix whatever we do wrong.
Tom Dorsey (16:27):
Do you respond publicly? Do you use AutoVitals to go in there and respond or do you log into your Yelp account and respond publicly on those platforms?
Joaquin Cordero (16:39):
Well, we try to reach customer, but sometimes they don’t want to talk and then we answer them online. Online try to reach no. Cause conflict is just, I’m sorry and hope we can make this work and fix whatever we did wrong. But basically that would,
Tom Dorsey (17:02):
Yeah, I mean it’s critical, right? It is critical that you respond when you have those, like Fred said, Hey, it’s possible that it’s a miscommunication, it’s a fake review or whatever you want to call it. But then also it actually happened. Own up to it. Say, Hey, I checked, I talked to my guys, we did this thing, please, I’ve been trying to reach out to you. I want to make this right. And then you just put that response out there. And like I said, the future customers are reading that and they say this is a reasonable person who cares about their customers and that’s the type of business that I’m going to do business with. And then just the bulk of the other reviews tell the story of who you are. So if we can just talk a bit about Go ahead. I
Fred Gestwicki Jr (17:46):
Had something super awesome to go along with your statements. What Joaquin just said, when you make a mistake, if you get defensive, you’re telling those potential new customers, these guys make mistakes and don’t own up to it. That’s what you’re confirming what they’re afraid of. They want to know, if I go here and it goes bad, it doesn’t go according to plan. What do they do? And Joaquin gave an awesome example. You talk to your guys, you find out what happened, we’ll take care of it for you, and you reassure that potential new customer that when we make mistakes, we stand behind it even when we made a mistake. So if you make the mistake and cause a one star, admit it, tell ’em you’re sorry, tell ’em you’ll fix it. Explain how you’re going to fix it. And all those potential new customers will see that if I go here and it goes bad, I can have faith knowing that they’ll stand behind it.
(18:35):
They’re not going to leave me out on the road. So I just want to confirm we’ve used that exact approach on the two bad reviews and it’s worked very, very well where people have mentioned, yeah, I read your one star review and you’re like, oh my gosh, you found it, it’s hidden and you found it. And they’re like, no, I saw I read it and it made sense. So answer those questions. When you read the one star review and you don’t know what happened, you’re having a question in your mind, what happened? What are they getting done? What did this business do to take care of the customer? Answer those questions, admit your mistake and move on. Love that response, Joaquin.
Tom Dorsey (19:06):
Yeah, yeah, perfect. Hopefully people are writing that stuff down, right? Add it to your own, the way that you handle and manage your reviews and you’ll build up a big review base with lots of good interaction and always make sure you try to, even if you hate Facebook, I get it. I guess you wouldn’t be watching this right now if you did, but get an account, put your business out there and have that available so that you can respond on those platforms. It really means the world. Just that little five minutes, it’s going to take two minutes, it’s going to take, could do wonders for you. We got a couple questions from viewers and Bill’s asking if we can talk a little bit about the types of things that we would add into our reviews or even requests. Do you guys ask them to write in specific things about maybe your digital inspection or the type of work or repair that they had done, their make and model so that you can get some SEO value also and some personalization to people who are looking for those reviews because that’s what’s going to stick out to ’em.
(20:11):
How do you guys do that? Joaquin, I’ll start with you buddy. How do you get more information into the review other than five stars? It was good.
Joaquin Cordero (20:24):
Well, lemme think about it. Can you ask Brett?
Tom Dorsey (20:27):
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (20:30):
I’ve found if you try and guide the customer, generally they may not either leave your review telling them what to do and people don’t want to be told what to do. They just want to do what they want. That’s why they’re at your shop, they chose you and in my thoughts, I get the opportunity to type I want in the review as a response and it’s counted as SEO value the same as the review. So the review that says we love, they were professional, they took good care of my breaks, blah blah, yay. Thank you for the five stars. So we start our response and we add personal touches into those response thank you. And so it was great to meet your husband and throw the husband’s first name in and we’re glad that your brake pad replacement on your Ford F-150 was a better job than you’ve experienced in the past.
(21:17):
And now I’ve thrown the keyword brake pad replacement, I’ve thrown the make and model in there. We don’t find asking unless it’s someone that’s in your top 2% where you can basically ask ’em to do anything and they’ll do it for you. Most of your customers, when you start asking ’em to do stuff, it deters them from doing the review. They want it to be simple, they want it to be easy. That’s why we send them links that takes ’em right to the platform instead of them having to search. So we found it didn’t work well, but we did find we just put in what we want in the response, we add that SEO value in our response and the customers like that. We are not just robo responding, it’s a person responding to a person about that personal connection that they made when they were in your business.
Tom Dorsey (22:00):
So that’s a great point is that you can get in there and so that even gives you more of a reason to get in there and add some responses and just maybe block some time out in a day to go through. So how about that, Joaquin? How often do you look at your reviews?
Joaquin Cordero (22:17):
All the time. We get a email that we got a review and also I check other people reviews and see how they react or what they have done it and also talk to other and see how they handle it and basically that way.
Tom Dorsey (22:37):
Good. So if you’re constantly monitoring those reviews and if you get notifications that come in when you get a new review, it’s a great opportunity. Take a couple of minutes, just get out and say, Hey, thank you for the great review. We had a great time doing the breaks on your, your Honda Civic or whatever the make model might be. And just take that opportunity to plant some of that SEO value in there and you’re responding to reviews. You’re kind of killing two birds with one stone and really getting out there and engaging with the customer base through those platforms. Fred, anything you’d like to add? Oh, Bill said Fred, thanks. That’s exactly what he was looking for.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (23:17):
Awesome.
Tom Dorsey (23:19):
Ask him what percentage of your reviews do you respond to? So kind of a great follow-up question to that. Is it on a regular basis you’re in there? I mean I guess you could overdo it, right? If you’re in there and it just looks like you got nothing better to do than respond on Yelp all day long. But about how often, what percentage of reviews do you respond to? Probably a hundred percent of the bad ones. But what about the good ones?
Fred Gestwicki Jr (23:41):
Joaquin? Go ahead, brother.
Joaquin Cordero (23:44):
Well, we tried to all of them good and bad and use the opportunity to put words that are good for Google, but we respond to everything. And again, we wait a few days if the review is bad and give time to think about it where we’re going to respond, cool off a little bit, but then we respond all of them.
Tom Dorsey (24:12):
Oh wow. So there you help.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (24:14):
The exact same policy, every single review should be responded to. If I go to search for a business to do business with and I’m just using online only as my referral system, I look for businesses that respond to their reviews and I read the responses. I don’t just look, if there is responses, I want to see that that owner, the guy in charge is engaged with the business. So if something bad happens, I know you can get to the top. And I think general public appreciates that we get stuck in our little worlds that we’ve created our little shop space and we forget what the rest of the world’s like sometimes and we forget that other people don’t know about cars, other people don’t know that you’re a good shop. Other people that drive by every day have no idea what you’re doing. They just don’t know.
(24:59):
So they walk into the situation with zero knowledge. They look at your website, they look at your reviews, and they make a decision and you have control of all of that. So by not responding to a review, even if it’s just five star with no words, just a rating so to speak, responding to that review tells that customer that they’re important and all your future customers to see it. How important that is. I left a review for the place that did our signage on the front of our shop, the sign at the road, and today I received an email from Google that our review has been viewed over a thousand times already. So I forwarded it to the owner of the sign company because he responded to my review and I wanted him to know, Hey, just so you know, this review’s helping. So how many of our customers have gotten those emails and not told us? Those reviews are so important to the best marketing there is. Tom,
Tom Dorsey (25:53):
That’s amazing. That’s awesome. So we’ve got a question also from the audience and wondering what does a four star review mean? What does a three star review mean? How do you handle the different, I mean one star down differently?
Joaquin Cordero (26:10):
Well, for us, we use focus on the positive and reaffirmed that what we did good. And talk about that and just talk too much about the good part and just know so much about what is bad
Tom Dorsey (26:26):
And it’s probably a place to get some information. It was probably something like, yeah, your service was great, but man, the toilet, the bathroom needed some cleaning up or something. What about you Fred? Look at your, do you notice that there’s a pattern in maybe a three star or a four star type review over the five star reviews?
Fred Gestwicki Jr (26:45):
My experience, it seems like the majority of society is black or white, five or one. That’s it just seems like they, yeah, and it’s like you look at surveys and you click the left or the right all the way down the column. We got our first four star review about a month ago. Really nice man. He had some extenuating needs that were hard for us to understand. He definitely had a compromise in his life. So when he gave the four star I called him, I would’ve one star, Hey, so I gave a four star, thank you so much for leaving review. What could we have done to give you a five star experience? He said, nothing. What?
Tom Dorsey (27:25):
He
Fred Gestwicki Jr (27:25):
Said, I don’t five star anything,
Tom Dorsey (27:27):
Anything.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (27:28):
I was like, okay, well, so I told him this is the best
Tom Dorsey (27:33):
As a five star.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (27:34):
He said, yeah. So now I thought about responding with that information, but that would almost seem made up to a total stranger if they saw a four star review and the response says, you said that a four star is the best you’ll ever do. That sounds like an excuse, like a being defensive. So instead of mentioning that this guy just doesn’t use the fifth star for whatever reason I did it for the new customers. Thanks for the rating. He didn’t put any words or anything. It was just a four star, thanks for the rating. We appreciate you came in, let us fix your year, make model of your vehicle, and the next time you’re here, let us know what else we can do to do a five star performance and get you to move your review up to a five star. So now he’s happy because I called him the review response is to the side now he’s glad I called him. And then I answered the question, you see that Fourstar, you’re a potential customer. Why did they leave a fourstar? And I’m not answering the question, I’m answering what I do with that. I didn’t say we did a star because your washer fluid wasn’t topped up or something. Instead we were saying, we are glad for the four star, let us know what we can do so the customer knows we’re striving to do better. So that’s my response to that. Tom
Tom Dorsey (28:48):
Bill said he can relate. There’s the fourstar cap group walk among us.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (28:54):
It’s better than two star cap group Bill. Just saying. Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (28:57):
That’s for sure. That’s a hard nut to crack. And I got to tell you, you really have to think of your reviews as really a window into your culture, right? Because organic reviews are going to save things like, hey, the coffee there was great. Everybody seems so happy. The place was clean, it was easy to find that big site. It was great landscaping. They’ll talk about all of these things. And so the more that you can make that stuff noticeable and without of course dosing all your crew on Prozac and have ’em walking around with a big fake smile on their face all day, but really just a little extra. Hey, what do you love about Chick-fil-A, when you go there, they say, my pleasure. And that stuff sticks. And so guess what I mean? It sticks enough to where it’s a meme and it’s a thing.
(29:44):
And so if you can just add that touch, it really allows your culture to come out and then be kind of promoted through those reviews as people are reading that they’re actually getting an understanding of what the service is going to be like once they get to your shop and they’re looking forward to doing business with you. So don’t be shy when it comes to being, I guess a little bit over the top and thankful to your customers while they’re in there because they’re going to notice and go on and tell their friends about it. Got a couple more. I know we’re kind of getting close on time, but we got a couple more great questions from the audience. Nick is asking Fred, has anyone left a review about how they loved the AutoVitals experience?
Fred Gestwicki Jr (30:32):
We don’t call our inspections inspections, we call them health reports and we actually, that’s what it says on the text. That’s what it says on your receipt. We do not use the word inspection except for new incoming customers. If you start talking health report, they dunno what you’re talking about. So you have to retrain them. We had a customer actually say, I loved the health report they sent me, and I actually emailed that caption to Uwe to show him because that’s something we developed at the digital shop conferences, those terminology using the health report. So we’ll have people say, they sent me a health report, they sent me pictures, they texted me, they emailed me. They’re mentioning the benefit of that digital communication and that digital inspection. They’re mentioning it in the reviews, probably one in 10, one in eight, pretty high ratio considering we’re not asking them what to talk about.
Tom Dorsey (31:19):
Yeah, that’s a great point. And AutoVitals makes it pretty easy to leave a review. Right? And a thank you email. And like we were talking earlier, you can set a ratio of platforms that you send the customer to leave the review. So that’s pretty simple. But what other ways do you guys use, Joaquin, I’ll start out with you. What other things might you do with counter material or at the counter to help the customers to leave the review? Not really beg ’em for it, but make it simple for them to leave the reviews for you.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (31:53):
You’re muted, Joaquin,
Joaquin Cordero (31:56):
Sir. So we use a lot of the other buyers follow up. They will ask feedback or a review and also when we do the follow up call, but we don’t have material printout material and when we get a review, we send a thank you card for the review.
Tom Dorsey (32:16):
Do you mail that? Yeah. That’s great.
Joaquin Cordero (32:18):
Yeah. But that’s about it. But it’s just mostly verbally asking for the review all the time.
Fred Gestwicki Jr (32:25):
Same here, Tom. We have one sheet of paper this big above the cashier window that says, if you love us, tell the world on Google or Facebook, we don’t target Yelp because we hate it. I know everybody hates it. I’m just lucky that no one cares. But that one piece of paper has generated zero views, that personal contact. And if you get your advisor to ask him for a favor to give you a review, they’ll mention the advisor by name. There’s nothing wrong with that. That shows they have a good relationship with that customer. So yeah, like Joaquin said, that personal ask, that talking, that engagement is really what drives those reviews up.
Tom Dorsey (33:01):
Fantastic. Well that was great guys. I really appreciate your time. Any last questions from the audience? Nope. Looks like we’re good. Tune in tomorrow what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to talk about how you can go in in the back end in AutoVitals set up your thank you email for success on review capture and other ways that you can take action, both using the program and setting up your scripts at dropoff, your scripts at pick up and just working generally within your culture. Make yourself attract reviews, right? It’s that law of attraction. You want reviews, you smile, you give good service, it permeates your culture. You get more good reviews, more good reviews, bring you more happy customers with pockets full of money. And we just keep on wash, rinse and repeat. So tomorrow when the webinar starts at 10:00 AM pacific time, we’ll be talking about the nuts and bolts on how to get your program set up to be a high velocity review generating machine.
(34:05):
Want to thank Fred and Joaquin again for their time and coming on and giving us great insight, man. I really appreciated some of the stuff that you guys brought to the table. Really helped these guys think and hopefully get out there and adopt some of these best practices in their operation. And guys, we really love hearing your success stories. We’ve been getting quite a few in over the last couple of days. Keep ’em coming, man. We’ll be happy to give you a shout out on the air and stuff when you’re taking some of the stuff that Fred and Joaquin and Neil and all the guys that have been coming on here over the last couple of weeks come in and you guys put that into action and it’s paying off. Tell us about it. Post it up on the Facebook form, Digital Shop, talk on Facebook and let’s continue the conversation on there. Tune in again next Wednesday. Same time, same place. 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern for the digital shop Talk radio. We’re going to be talking about website stuff. Producer Nema, what is the title of our show next week? It’s called Website stuff.
(35:08):
Increased Customer
(35:09):
Acquisition. Oh, there it is. Increased customer acquisition by providing answers online. So education online to help catch those customers early in the buying process when they’re still in the research phase, long before they say Find a shop near me. That’s where you want to get your message out there. You want to get in front of eyeballs at that stage. You get ’em first early Bird gets the worm tune in next Wednesday we’ll be talking to a couple shops that take that to the next level and talk about how they really fill up that appointment schedule with fresh acquisitions. We’re working it like a throttle. We learned the other week and through our marketing and we look forward to talking to you then. Until then, let’s talk on Facebook. Post it up, tell your friends. We’ll see you next Wednesday. Go make some money. Thanks Fred. Thanks Joaquin. Thank you everybody. See you guys. Alright guys. Thank you. Yep.