A 3 minute read.

My experience across multiple business ventures and with our estate and letting agents clients is that people are prompt when posting negative feedback. But for a positive experience, they let it go and move onto the next thing in their lives - which is fair enough I suppose. But for us business owners striving for social proof and for perfection in our processes, it doesn't help!

Whilst going about my usual networking amongst estate / letting agents, I often hear a lot of debate as to *when* they should be asking for a review.

My advice is quite simply to think about your typical customer's journey and generally when are they at their happiest. Generally, I’d look at the points and of course tweak it from there:

For an estate agent and their sellers', there are at least 4 points in the journey:

1 - At appraisal stage (especially if it was for divorce / probate purposes where there isn't any financial reward so a review would be better than nothing)
2 - After they just instructed you
3 - After they reach STC status
4 - After they reach "Exchanged" status

For an estate agent and their buyers', there are at least 3 points in the journey:

1 - The day after they registered with you
2 - At the offer accepted stage
3 - At the contract exchange stage

What about letting agents? From experience, you guys tend to get negative reviews when half the time, it's not even to do with you - for example, the tenant is venting about the landlord or the area - and because you're the one with an online profile, you get the stick!

Unfortunately, you can't do much about this but focusing on getting positive reviews to balance out those negative ones is more important.

For a letting agent and their landlords, there are a few different points in the journey:

1 - After they instruct you
2 - After you found them a tenant
3 - The day after the tenant moves in
4 - After dealing with a maintenance issue
5 - After negotiating a renewal
6 - After resolving a tenant dispute (deposit)

For a letting agent and their tenants, again, there are a few potential points in their journey:

1 - The day after they registered with you
2 - After you found them a property
3 - The day after they move in
4 - After dealing with a maintenance issue
5 - After negotiating a renewal
6 - After resolving a tenant dispute (deposit)

In any of the above scenarios though, one thing is for sure, don't just ask for a review once. Keep asking until you get one (within reason of course)! It just takes time for it to register with people so it might be worth setting a regular reminder in your CRM to chase (if you know they haven't done a review as yet).

My thanks to Ryan Woolfenden @ LeaderFox for helping with some invaluable insight for this article.

If you're interested in confidently collecting reviews from your customers, we might have just the application for you! Why not get in touch with us today!