Phil RisherPhlash Consulting · No. 1 Digital Marketing Consulting Company For $1m-10m Home Service Businesses 🚀

Most home service businesses think a five-star review means they nailed it. #shorts

24 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:50

In this short, Phil Risher argues that a five‑star Google review alone does not guarantee business growth for home‑service companies. He emphasizes that true customer experience—wowing clients through every touchpoint—creates referrals and repeat business. Risher recounts his experience as director of business development at a home‑service firm, where he mapped the customer journey and introduced practices such as sharing before‑and‑after photos, personal introductions, handshakes, detailed walkthroughs, clear explanations of the work, call‑ahead notifications, and a friendly follow‑up call the next day. After implementing these steps, the company’s Google reviews surged from 36 to over 1,000 within a year, and revenue grew from $3 million to $4 million, driven by referrals and warm leads rather than reliance on Google Ads.

Chapters

Your customer experience is either creating referrals or bad reviews. If you're not truly wowing your customers through your experience, then yeah, okay, they might pay you, they might even leave you an obligatory 5-star review, but are they going to tell their friends and family about you? Are they going to use you for other services they need? Probably not. I remember I started working at the home service business and I was director of business development, and the first thing I did was I say, okay, what does our customer journey look like? Do we share before and after pictures with these people? Are we shaking their hands, telling them our names, walking them around the house, explaining what we're about to do? And more importantly, are we explaining everything from start to finish? Are we doing a call ahead? Are we doing a happy next day call? Once we started implementing these things, our Google reviews went from 36 Google reviews to over 1,000 reviews in 12 months. But more importantly, the business grew from $3 million to $4 million in 12 months because we started getting referrals, because we started getting warm leads coming into the business and not just relying on Google Ads.