A 3 minute read.

I’ve worked with estate / letting agents for over 15 years now, and one thing that I've regularly picked up is that they can be hesitant to ask clients for reviews for fear of (presumably) a public bashing.

Especially for letting agents, the biggest issue can be tenants because in some cases, their feedback is directed at the landlord or the property itself and not specifically to do with the letting agent but because the agent is the one with the social channels, they end up acting as a voice and therefore taking the flack.

For any business, social proof is extremely important. Google is my platform of choice and the reason is simple. Seeing as a lot of our website traffic stems from Google, I want my listing to stand out and having gold stars with good reviews helps with that!

As you probably know, people are extremely quick to leave negative feedback but unfortunately, getting positive reviews is tough.

When a positive experience occurs, people generally just move on with their lives and so a review is the last thing they think about.

So what can you do to simplify the user's journey and attract more reviews? What can you do to mitigate the risk of a negative review going public?

Well, we’ve developed a nifty little application which enables you to be a bit more confident in asking for a review.

An explainer video can be seen here, but to explain the general gist…

The customer is offered a choice of 5 stars with which to rate the business and if they select 1-3, they are presented with a form asking for their contact details and feedback which gets emailed to the agent directly…

However, if they select 4-5 stars, they are given a choice of social platform to post the review and then, upon selection (Google for example), they are taken directly to the 'Write Review' screen in order to post their review.

See? Simple but really effective!

You can check out our own review form here - https://review.estateapps.co.uk/.

In case you hadn't already realised, there are a few great benefits to this application:

  • You have one link to give out to clients (rather than links to multiple platforms) thereby simplifying the process
  • Each review platform loads up in a new browser window so it's easy to copy and paste the review to multiple platforms
  • It doesn't matter how many different branches or offices you have, you can include links to review each one individually
  • You can include all your review platforms on there - Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Feefo, Trustpilot, AllAgents etc (although I'd advise caution in offering too much choice)
  • It's a nice way of pre-screening negative feedback without it going public
  • It gives you an opportunity to turn negative feedback into a positive experience for the customer
  • It’s branded to you and even has your domain name (e.g. review.yourdomain.co.uk)
  • It’s just a link so you can push people toward it from your website or email

As the great Stephen Brown and Nathan Emerson suggest, there is typically more than one point in your customer's journey at which to ask for a review. Basically, think about when they are happiest, it could be when they've just agreed to join you, it could be at the point an offer is made, or on exchange at the end of the transaction. Hell, it could be all of the above!

If you do receive negative feedback, get in touch with estate agency content creator and PR guru Jerry Lyons, for some useful tips on how to deal with it in a 'nice' way!

Of course, you can't stop someone going directly to Google (for example), to post their review but this application helps to minimise the risk because you’ve sent it to them directly.

So what do you think? Granted, this application does not change the world, and won't guarantee you lots of reviews. I mean, you still need to put in the effort to get them! Unfortunately, there's no avoiding that but hopefully, you can see how a simple application like this can simplify the reviews process and empower your customers to provide feedback!

If you're interested in confidently collecting reviews from your customers with this feature, why not get in touch with us today!