All You Have to Do is Ask

RCS Influencer Danny Kerr says the best way to gain more positive reviews is to have a process in place and never forget to ask your customers. 

Editor's note: Listen to the full interview to hear how Breakthrough Academy acquires, handles and distributes their reviews. 

Megan Ellsworth: Good afternoon. My name is Megan Ellsworth here at Roofers Coffee Shop and today I am with Danny Kerr at Breakthrough Academy and we're going over the May influencer topic today which is how do you handle reviews? Danny, take it away. How do you guys handle reviews and what advice do you have for contractors out there? 

Danny Kerr: So first thing is just ask. Kind of a funny story even for our company, we're six years into business and we had zero Google reviews up until January 1 and the funny thing is we've just never asked. We've just been busy with other initiatives, doing other things. We have one of our guys in charge of marketing who came on recently and kind of said, "P.S. - You probably should figure that out." So we're like, "Okay. Let's put a little plan behind it." We asked our customers and within a month we had 125 reviews in there. 

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. 

Danny Kerr: Yeah, so really, I mean I'll tell you exactly what we did and just how to do it but it's as simple as remembering and having a process around asking. Because we teach a lot of stuff, we even teach how to increase quality in your organization but even for ourselves we just never put in a process for our coaches to ask for a review which is funny. 

So what we normally would do and what I've ... Back in the day when I was running a painting company used to do all the time, is I wait to ask until the customer is wowed. So you don't want to try and ask right away because they're not going to have much to review you on and you don't want to wait too long because they might forget that emotional experience that they're going through with you. So right when the customer is wowed, which is usually at the end of a project let's say. Instead of just saying, "Hey, could you write a review," first question is, "What is it about working with us that you got tons of value out of?" So that's the first question. 

Megan Ellsworth: Wow, that's interesting. 

Danny Kerr: And they'll say whatever it is. I love the way your guys showed up, they were clean. I love the professionalism, I love the roof itself, whatever it is they're saying, cool. Just validate that. Be like, "Cool. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Is there anyone else that you know in your network that would get similar value from something like this?" So they're like, "Actually maybe. I might actually have somebody in my network." So you can actually also ask for referrals in this exact same process. 

Megan Ellsworth: Okay. 

Danny Kerr: They go, "Cool. Awesome." "Based on all this too, would you be willing to write a review on what you just told me of what you get value out of?" "Yeah. You know what? Actually maybe I would be." "Cool. I'm going to send you a quick link via text, if you can fill it out, let us know a little bit about what you just said to me verbally, that would be amazing, it helps out a ton as a company and overall just appreciate your support." 

Megan Ellsworth: Brilliant. 

Danny Kerr: So you wow the customer. Ask them what their biggest piece of value that they got was because if you just say can you write a review they'll be like, "I guess. You guys were good." But it's like no, what was it? What was the thing? Okay, now that we've isolated what that thing was, do you know anyone else that would get value? So we get a referral, and then cool, would you be willing to write that? Okay, cool. 

Then we use Broadly and we have a lot of our clients who use Broadly to basically review management. So what will happen is we'll send them a link, the customer fills out the review. If they give us like a one or a two star rating, it goes right to our team. It says, "Hey. This person rated you low. You may want to take care of this as a customer complaint." If you receive a four or a five, you can say, "Hey that now can go through into whatever social media platform, Facebook, Google Reviews," whatever it is you want it to go to, it will redirect the customer and allow them to leave the review properly. So it's not only good for getting reviews, it's also really good for quality control on your reviews. 

Megan Ellsworth: Okay. Interesting. Broadly. That's great. I love how you guys are so concise in your processes there at Breakthrough. You really know what you're doing, you take the time to evaluate what you want to have done and then you put it in place and it's just great. So I love it. 

Danny Kerr: Thank you.  

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. Any last words on reviews for contractors? 

Danny Kerr: No, just going back to the simple thing of just ask. It's not just like remember to ask, it's put it in your process. Like even us as a company, we do a lot of things great, we didn't have a process for asking and as a result and it sounds cool that we got 125 reviews in a month, it's just the fact that we had 400 customers that work with us every day. We had a big backlog of people that could have said stuff, and we just didn't ask. So now we are and now we will consistently. 

Megan Ellsworth: That's great. Always have to ask. I love it. 

Danny Kerr: Yeah. 

Megan Ellsworth: Great. Well thank you Danny and I will be talking with you in June. 

Danny Kerr: Awesome Megan. Okay thanks. 

Megan Ellsworth: Thanks. 

Danny Kerr is the Director of Assessment of Breakthrough Academy. See his full bio here.