Your company’s online reputation is incredibly important, because around 93% of potential customers will check reviews before they decide to work with a contractor. Showing people who search for services in your area that you’re a reputable company that stands behind its work can help you branch out to new customers. Check out the Reputation Manager service from CraftJack if you’re interested in protecting your online presence without taking time away from running your business.

How Can You Protect Your Online Reputation?

There are many ways you can protect your online reputation, but doing it yourself can take a lot of time. You have to check the internet regularly for customer reviews and interact with them. These reviews may be on social media, review sites, or a host of other places.

One thing many contractors quickly realize is that trying to protect their online reputation can equate to a full-time job. It’s very easy to get sidetracked trying to do this, to the point that you can’t focus on getting projects done as you should.

Some contractors opt to ignore their online reputation, but this is a huge mistake. The vast majority of individuals will turn to online reviews or personal recommendations when they need to find a contractor. If they look at a specific company or contractor online and see negative comments, they’ll likely bypass that business. This could cost your company money.

Letting your online reputation slip down is another mistake. It’s very hard to rebuild a positive reputation. Once people post negative reviews of a company, others in the area may see and talk about those reviews, expanding the impact of a single unhappy customer.

By protecting your online reputation, you can expand your potential customer base. They’ll start to see that your customers appreciate your work and customer service. This could help to fill your schedule and grow your business.

How To Deal With Negative Comments

Anyone in the service industry is bound to have an unfavorable review every now and then. What many people don’t realize is how you deal with these online customer reviews can have a huge impact on your company. For example, responding angrily to negative comments could make potential clients turn to another contractor.

Instead, find a way to respond that shows you understand the customer has a problem with the job you did and offer a solution, or ask the unhappy customer to contact you directly to work something out.

The goal of your reply is to show anyone who’s reading the review that you care about customer satisfaction. If possible, ask the customer to update the review, or you can post an update about how the problem was handled so people can see that you stand behind your work and do what’s in your power to make customers happy.

It’s possible you could win someone who wrote a negative review back as a customer, based on how you reply to their complaints. In fact, they could become a loyal client for you and even recommend your company to friends and family members who need to use your service.

Handling Fictitious Negative Reviews

One thing you might not realize when you’re trying to protect your online reputation is that some negative reviews might not come from actual customers. In some cases, unscrupulous companies will hire people to post negative reviews of their competition to try to divert business.

Most online review websites have terms of service requirements that require all reviews to come from actual customers of a business. It might be possible to have these negative reviews removed from the internet, but it likely won’t be easy. This could take even more time away from customers who are utilizing your services now.

These review websites usually won’t allow contractors to pull down negative reviews themselves. Because these site want to provide reviews that are unbiased, they must allow both positive and negative posts. You’ll have to find out how the review site handles this type of situation. They might require you or the reviewer to provide documentation proving your side of the matter.

Many contractors are so busy that they simply don’t have time to scour the internet to find reviews of their business. CraftJack understands this and offers its Reputation Manager to help busy contractors focus on getting projects done rather than handling online customer interactions. Using this program also means you don’t have to worry about protecting your digital reputation — we do it for you.