Dealing With Online Reviews - Ep.79

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to the Landscape Business Course podcast. Today is audio only, so if you're listening to this, thank you for joining us here on the show. Today I have a special guest, it's my office manager, Liz Naber. She'll be joining with me on today's episode and I want to say a big thank you to everyone joining the course. Signing up for the conference the past week or two has been really great. A lot of you have been joining on and I want to say thank you. Welcome to the community and if you haven't already, go to Landscape Business course and check it out. I uploaded a new video just recently this past week showing behind the scenes of what the course includes, all the different topics and modules that are included in that course as well as the templates that I share with you as far as commercial contracts, how to hire employees, the paperwork involved behind that, and I share all of that pricing information that we use at our company with you. So check it out landscapebinniscourse.com watch that video and you can see what the course entails. So first of all, welcome Liz.

Thank you.

Thank you to the show. Liz has been my office manager for a little over two years now at Augusta Lawn Care Services and has been with me since we've had two and three employees all the way up to now, 15 plus. So really been kind of the right hand person number two in the company and had a lot of perspective. And a couple weeks ago we heard from one of the new estimators, project managers has worked with our company, Lee and so if you haven't heard that episode, feel free to check back with that one from a few episodes ago. Hearing from him was really good for a lot of you as far as how to train up an estimator, train up someone that is out of the field and taking over the estimating and project management side of things. Today we might hear some insight as far as the office side, but today we want to deal with something specifically around complaints. A couple weeks ago, a couple months ago we talked about complaints specifically, but today I want to talk about online reviews, how to deal with them and what you can do to make them into a positive for you and for your business and how you cannot mar your online, you know really what your company's all about online with one negative review. So whether it be Yelp, whether it be Google plus, Facebook, all of these sites have, you know, if you've been in business for long enough, you've had a negative review You've had a customer that doesn't like you, has some against you, feel like they've been ripped off, whatever it is, and they go online to air their dirty laundry and tell everyone, their friends, their family, and it hurts. It hurts. And especially when you're small, if you know that person, if you know the job and you feel like it was unjust, it wasn't necessarily fair that you get that online review, Sometimes you do make mistakes, sometimes you do actually make errors in the work that you do, and then it is aired publicly. And the thing with social media is it amplifies word of mouth. So back in the day, if you would have made someone mad or made a customer service error, that person would have perhaps told one or two friends of people they knew. But now, with online technology and with social media, one negative review can be shared, it can be liked, it can be cross, you know, shared across different platforms, and very easily. One negative review, one negative testimonial, one bad customer can really spread poison around your community very quickly, especially if it's shared through social media. And really, in my opinion, the biggest thing is not so much the review itself, but how you respond to it. That is so important, and that is really what a lot of people will gravitate to on social media. If you take it wrong, if you start to fight back, if you try to fight fire with fire, it many times will end in a very ugly situation. And I've had a lot of the course members come back to me and send me screenshots and of times where they have done this, and then they come crawling back and asking for forgiveness, or they have to go to that person and ask them to take it down or it gets ugly offline because they did something stupid online. And so really keeping your emotions in check when you make that initial response to that online review is super important. But today we want to talk about it. We're going to get some of Liz's perspectives and some of the stories that have gone in our company as far as negative reviews. Even though we pride ourselves in customer service and making the customer as happy as they possibly can be and wowing the customer and trying to serve them the best way we possibly can. And really being a leader in our industry in customer service, regardless of that, there's still going to be the 1 2% of customers that are going to make a fuss. They're going to ask for things that are ridiculous, that are going to post online reviews that are negative. And so how do we deal with those? So let's get today's kicked off. We're not gonna be long. But I wanted to share a couple stories. Liz is gonna share a story actually of one or two instances today that she, as the office manager, had to deal with with the assistants and with the other staff that we have, how we deal with those. And tell us about what happened this morning. First one.

Well, I don't know if today is a good day to discuss this or a bad day to discuss this because normally, you know, it's. I'm very, you know, it's all about the customer and all this, and I still am. But today it gets pretty comical because I have to be careful not to burst out laughing at times when it gets a little ridiculous. So we get to work this morning and I have this voicemail in this very radio like voice, which I was impressed by. So I was enjoying this complaint.

Last maybe 10 days ago, one of our guys was mowing and he was a very first mow for this customer. So this is their first introduction to our company. And he had a rock, a flick up from his machine. Weed eater. Yeah. And hit their little glass in their screen in the front door. And it shattered it. And so this is how we handle it. As soon as it happens, our employee takes a picture of whatever's broken, sends it to me. I immediately, immediately call the company to come and get an estimate. Then I called the glass company, the glass company, sorry. Then I call the customer and let them know this is what happened. I've already called somebody to come take care of it. Will we place it at no cost to you? And just profuse apologies. Well, when this happened, the lady had called me and she really liked our mowing guy. And she called and she's like, oh, he's such a nice young man. Don't get him in trouble or anything. Well, this morning I asked him, I said, hey, was there a guy around? And he goes, yeah, there was a man standing in the back with his arms crossed and saying nothing. So I guess that's the gentleman who called me this morning. And he was irate. Well, he was sounding irate and saying that he was. That this had happened 10 days ago. And his door was taken away.

Yes.

And it had not been returned. And that if it wasn't returned by noon today, he was gonna sue us.

And he couldn't go outside of his.

Front door and he couldn't breathe or get fresh air and on and on, and I can't use all the words that were used, but I was doubled over in LAUGHTER it was a fantastic complaint. So.

Well, the thing is, it wasn't a new one necessarily because we already knew about it. So it took away the sting.

And I already knew that the door was going to be replaced tomorrow, which is incredible because they usually take 10 days just to order the glass. And they had taken it. They're a great company we work with, they were gonna replace it tomorrow. So I gave him. I immediately called the glass company and they, they let me know they had already spoken to him twice and that he already knew the door was being replaced the next day, but he was threatening to sue me. And I've got some of his lines memorized, they were epic. So I gave him a call, told him who I was and then he asked a lot of questions about the installation of glass and everything. But we had a very nice conversation. He was trying to act mad, but he already knew it was going to be installed the next day. So you can turn these around. It's not pleasant to get to work in the morning and that's the very first thing you hear. We've had several incidents lately. As all those in the lawn care company know, stuff happens, stuff breaks and we disappoint people. And no matter what you say or whether you're at fault or not, from their perspective, it is what it is. So it's how they felt and how they viewed it and that's the angle you've got to take it from.

And so you called him and you basically explained it to him. Was he okay with it after?

Oh, yes, I profusely apologized and told him that tomorrow it would all be resolved and it was all good.

Okay, so that was more in the real world. But then later in the day, a couple hours later, we got an online review from a customer that we had mowed a couple we months ago. It was a month ago when the.

Growth was so substantial there's no way you could go two weeks.

Right.

And they had not mowed for quite a while.

It was super long, it was on.

A hill and there was a lot of bumps and ruts.

So it was a bad looking lawn.

Yeah. And. And so our. I remember the day our guy came back and he said, yeah, it was their first mow, hadn't been mowed in a long time, really bad looking, so it's hard to get an even cut. And then it wasn't nice grass or a nice.

Well, it was like on a steep slope and it was patchy because they would. They probably let it go dormant last year and so made A bunch of bumps and ruts and it's like a steep, steep hill. And it was a foot long when I was there to look at it. Like a month to give the estimate.

Yeah, yeah. So they called and complained and said that when they mowed it, it was never like that. And so I explained that the first mow, it's going to be quite long and with the rapid growth, you don't want to even wait two weeks because three days later it doesn't look like there was growth. So, you know, they, they said some pretty harsh things online and of course they're not going to say anything about their challenged lawn. So I did not tell the one employee about this because he's always very concerned about doing a good job and things going well. And so. Did you want to read the review?

Yeah, let me just try to pull it up here. I'll actually read the whole thing.

So what I offered the customer at that time of the first MOW is I asked, I offered. I didn't offer them a free MOW because we already didn't make money on it because he had to mow it several times. And so I offered him, would you like to go ahead and start your recurring service so your first or your next MO would get it down to a more satisfactory level? And so that's what I talked him into. Then he got that bill and at that recurring price, which he already knew and said he didn't want to pay that and that should have been free. It was a delightful experience all the way around. So in the end he ended up canceling us. And then he probably really needs a mo right now, which made him angry. And so that's probably why he went up on our website now, because he's needing to find someone to come mow.

So we're gonna go ahead and read his review and then, and then our response to his complaint. So this is his review that he wrote this morning. It says, service so bad, I'm actually taking time to write a review.

When I came home after Augusta's first service at my house, I was horrified as it appeared that a group of teenagers may have spent the afternoon spinning donuts in my front yard while dragging their half detached bumper. There were deep grooves, ridges, areas that had been shaved down to the dirt, and others that appeared shaggy and all but untouched. Never had my lawn been left in such a state. During the next two trips out, while not as traumatic, it seems they made up for their first mistake by simply running over the grass at the highest possible setting. Which left it looking shaggy again after three days. Do yourself a favor, save your money. Look elsewhere. So this morning, we replied and said, good morning, Caleb, exclamation mark. Thank you for your feedback, and we are very sorry that your service was not satisfactory. Because the lawn was so overgrown, it usually takes several mows to get it down to a satisfactory height without completely killing it. Because, because of your feedback, we have implemented a system to make sure we communicate this fact to clients and have very tall grass when we start or initiate service. Have a fantastic day.

We love getting complaints. We love being better.

Well, like, honestly, you'd ideally have complaints or you would have negative criticisms coming back to you via email instead of online, truly. But the thing is, you do have to give people. I think we. We have probably got around a lot of negative online reviews simply because in our. In our invoices, we ask people to kind of air their dirty laundry with us and ask how we can get better, what we could have improved on. And then from that, we do try to create systems and procedures to negate a lot of that negativity. And so I think that has circumvented a lot of online airing of dirty laundry. So I think that's a takeaway for some. You know, number one, if you have a lot of people doing that, I would definitely make sure you're asking people via email, your customers, after you do a job for them, you know, how could we have done better? And really ask them, say, hey, we're not gonna be offended. We want your criticisms so that we can become better. That's one way to really kind of get it out in a place that's a little bit more neutral and isn't going to be as much, you know, fire throwing back and forth and mudslinging as far as online, and definitely a place where you can safely ask for their opinions or clarify things that went on throughout the job and not have to do it all in a public forum as far as online, on Facebook or Yelp or whatever it is. And so the big takeaway, I think, for a lot of people listening, would be to make sure you're asking for that negative feedback in a safe form like email or even on the phone. And after you're doing a job, we do it on every single invoice. Even for our mowing customers, it is on the invoice at the bottom in the terms and conditions, asking for criticisms and positive feedback so that we can.

Improve, and we so, so, so appreciate the feedback. So, for instance, the beginning of the season when, when they're on a bi weekly and they get a mo and it exactly three days later looks horrible. I get it. I totally get where the customer is coming from. So after a week they're like, I know it's been two weeks, you know, and it's just the growth is so substantial. So now when we send out the original estimate, we don't know if people have had their lawn mowed. It could be up to three feet now. So we just give them a weekly and a bi weekly price and then we put a note on there that on their initial mow, if it's over six inches, that there's going to be a 50% upcharge.

No, we don't even have the 50% up charge anymore. We change it towards just an upcharge because if it's 33ft versus 8 inches, truly, we have to charge way, way more.

Truly. But so they understand that coming in that it's going to be quite a bit higher. And another thing we do, which saves.

Us a trip from having to go and do estimates just to see how long.

Right. Because we do satellite estimates.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, people know that going in. Another thing, we take complaints or constructive criticism very, very seriously. So for instance, if a person pays a very high fee for weeding, it needs to be weeded. So, so we don't, like I'm laughing because I know this certain situation. But we have yellow slips and we have a pile of them in the office. And so we have, if there's any complaint from a customer, we have the date, the day it was serviced, who was there last, the complaint, then a line for the resolution, how we resolved it and who resolved it, and then they have to sign it. So if somebody calls the office, I mean I can spend a whole day just, you know, dealing with that kind of thing. So now just to resolve any anxiety about it, I just take out the yellow slip, right. All the details of it. And we have a slot in the office. So the guys are like magnets towards these things when they walk in and see them. So the way we handle it is they read what the customer's complaint was and somebody from that crew goes back personally to the person's house, knocks on the door so it's safer weeding. And then they show them the exact areas that are consistently being missed. And then we have notes on. The guys have an app on their phone that has notes and so we can put notes of the customers preferences. The guys let me know, hey, we got to make sure to get this one area more often and make sure we get this and this and the notes are on there now, no matter who goes to their property, they all see the same notes and then we get the job done. The guys bring the yellow slip back and we on our team meetings on Wednesday morning, they bring it up to everyone. Nowadays, most of the customers send emails. So we just show the emails to everybody. We discuss it. This is when you go to so and so's property. From now on, this is how we do it. It's worked fantastic and we haven't made it a negative. So we have a lot of. It's fantastic. So for instance, there's elderly people and they are just worried and fretting and it might not be a big thing. Like, I've had guys go back and there's nothing there. But sometimes the customer just needed to talk and vent and they're frustrated. And we had two of those this week and they called me later and everything was just wonderful. They just loved the guy and they were afraid of confrontation. But we just encouraged them that we want you to say something we do not know unless you say, and you're paying for a service and you should get the service that you pay for. So they're paying us. We need to serve them.

So when you get an online review, though, like, what's the protocol? Because for some people, we will bend over backwards and try to make sure that we resolve that. Give them things for free, go back to a job site, fix things, you know, do extra things. And then there's other ones, like the one we got this morning where we basically almost ignored it.

It was an act of God. His grass kept growing.

He needs an insurance policy.

But like, when. When do you. When do you decide? How do you decide whether you should bend over backwards or. It's really like, address it, obviously in that online. On that online public forum in a constructive way. So other people see that you're handling things professionally, but then basically do nothing about it.

Right. So this particular person, we had bent over backwards, extra services. We took the yellow slip back, like the. The hole works. And he was happy the next time and then not happy the next time. Anyway, whatever. But then there's. There's been times that we've gotten one online and we had no clue that there was any dissatisfaction. And we instantly called them. Oh, man, we're so sorry. You didn't say anything. We would have resolved it that very day. So please tell us what we can do. We get back out there, we take care of it and then they come back on and our relationship with them is better. They post another review that we came out and resolved it. There are others like this gentleman today. There's nothing you're going to say and there's nothing you're going to do to fix it because they maybe don't when when our off or one of our guys, I had him call him to, you know, hey, how can we do it better? And he had no reason. He's like, I'm just done. So you know, maybe they don't have a nice lawn. They can't really afford lawn care. They don't want to mow their own grass. So it's easier to just complain. So there's times you'll never resolve it. And the way Mike wrote the review today is good. Non confrontational. We're sorry. We appreciate your feedback. And now we've done this and this and this to get better.

And I think that's the important part is to show that you take criticism and that you are trying to get better. Like we created a system to make sure like by putting that disclaimer in the, in the email. And a lot of times now after the first mo actually we created the system since then as far as where the guys have to talk to the customer after the first mow to get that if that feeling is there that they can explain in person instead of over an email which is never as good or even the phone but in person, tell them, hey, like working next time we'll cut it lower. It won't look as bad. We don't want to kill the grass. We're not going to cut it down at two or three inches.

Yeah, yeah. There's so there's so many different kinds of situations that we've addressed even recently that, that have been really good. There's a, there's other circumstances where they need somebody that can putter around and just be the same exact eyes on that comes and picks this little weed and that little weed.

Basically not like a big company.

Yeah. So big company, they're on a schedule. They have their route figured out. They have a certain amount of jobs they're trying to get done in the day and the guys are just booking it. They're doing a good job but they're on a mission. So. So they can't just go real slow. So in that case.

Well, and the big thing too is you're not getting the same set of eyes on each property every single week.

Right.

Like literally you might have one person mow a Lawn, but then be on other crews or routes or landscaping jobs and then be back at that property four, five, six weeks later and have no context as to what has happened since the last time they were there.

Right. So if someone like that complains every single time, we finally. We understand, we get it, okay? They need the same person there always. And we actually have a repertoire of people that we know that are very, very small companies. One man, two guys. And we respectfully suggest them give their information. And we've heard some feedback from the customers. And those people how well that's worked out, that we very kindly said, we are not the ones to meet your property needs, but we recommend so and so they. They'd be the same one there every week. And we actually got feedback last Saturday, even how well that had worked out and how much they appreciated us recommending someone else.

So when.

When.

When do you, as an office manager have to drop a client because they are abusing the customer service relationship that we. Or standards that we uphold?

Oh, let me tell you something you're.

Gonna tell about Peggy.

This was epically awesome. I have. I have not been slammed so harshly by a customer. We have a precious lady who calls almost every service. She's out of the town a lot, but when she comes home, then she has. So we have quite a long list of her job notes. Job notes. When the guys go. So this. This past time, she called me to let me know. Oh, we probably talked 15 minutes while I had a customer standing in front of me. And she let me know that I was not a good listener and that every time she called that I was not listening to her and making sure her needs were met, et cetera. So we went over the visit notes. Yep, Yep. That's all I want them to do, Liz, is what's on the notes. So I said we would talk about it as a team, and then we, you know, see what hadn't been right this time. And so that's fine. So the guys get back, and so one of them tells me, we didn't do the stuff that's normally on the list. We did this and this and this and this. And I found out from her she was timing them on all these little things. And so of course they know she was upset that they hadn't done the things on the list well, because she gave them all these others. So we are a very tight team, and we communicate fantastically well. And we are totally fine with our guys getting tips. And we have customers that tip them, and they totally deserve it. And we think that's great. So when the guys came back, we. They told us that each of them had been tipped $20 and given cookies and etc, whatever. And then so Mike and I are like, okay, her visit was $50 and she just tipped $40. And so the guys were telling me, he said, I was almost back to the shop and I realized we were paid hush money so that we wouldn't tell that we had done all these other things so then she could call and demand that her services weren't done and then we'd have to come back and do those services as well. So we realized we're not going to put ourselves in that position anymore. We've had this client for many years. She's complained before and fired us and come back. And so we've bent over backwards to please her. And so number one, there's a lot of office time. So I had a customer standing in front of me that wasn't getting the attention they needed. And so that story gets really funny. In the end.

She told one of our other employees, you got told what even happened. So I emailed her this apology. I suggested this other company. I'm so sorry. I feel like we can't adequately meet your property's needs anymore. And you know, why don't. But I was on one of our trainees and computers and so her signature was on the bottom of my email. So we get this feedback from the customer. Oh, if only had been speaking with you from the beginning, my experience from Augusta would have been much different. And she was spilling all this stuff to her, to this other person and saying that Liz, she might be a good office manager, but like Trump, she should be kept off the phone and several other things like that. So that was pretty funny to come in here. So I had to nicely tell her that it was me she was speaking to the whole time. And she had a fantastic response to that too. So I had a good laugh about that. But anyway, we're partying very kindly and we recommended her to someone else.

So I think when it comes to complaints, the reason it makes our industry a little bit unique is that it's very subjective as far as what is a good job versus a bad job. Literally, one person will have you create a landscape exactly the way they want it and their neighbor will think it's the worst job in the entire world. And so the problem is you can't just cookie cutter a product. For instance, an iPhone. Most people like or do not like it. It's pretty, you know, objectively works or it doesn't. It turns on or it doesn't. Whereas with landscaping, every single job, everything you do, whether it be how straight your lines are, how thick your edges are, how deep your edges, if you bag your clippings, if you don't bag your clippings, exactly how you trim a rose, however you do something, it is very subjective, the type of service that we perform. And so you're gonna have complaints, but I think how you deal with them is really what's gonna separate you from your competition. Because at some point you're gonna get them, you're gonna have haters, you're gonna have people that are going to complain. And on an online public forum, it's not the place to try to fight them. It's not the place to try to argue with them. It's never. If you're going to ever have to do something confrontational, you want to do it in person or at least on the phone, don't do it in email and by all means, do not do it on social media, it'll always come back to bite you. Be the bigger person and really try to either A, win the customer back or B, give them a resolution that is in their best interest and is going to leave a good taste if at all possible and in their mouth when they think about your company. So I hope something today was said that would help you. Maybe you've got online review, something has gone negative, a complaint in the past couple weeks. I hope that helps with and how you can deal with that. I'm Mike Andes. Liz Naber here. Until next time. We'll see you landscapefinishcourse.com.