The Review Mistakes Costing Tradespeople Thousands w/ Ryan Nesbitt

And the amount of businesses we see that are superb at what they do, but they have no way of telling anyone else.

It's top secret.

It's almost top secret. And that is a travesty for, I mean, for tradespeople we know that are blood, sweat, and tears through their business and really, really, really provide an amazing service. For God's sake, take advantage of that feedback. And what we see with trades for sure is that the ones that do focus on it win big because The vast majority don't have a strategy and aren't focused on driving that feedback.

This is the Gas Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Tully Priest, and today I'm joined by Ryan Nesbitt. Ryan is the founder of Revu, a platform designed to help businesses collect and manage and showcase customer reviews. Welcome to the show, Ryan.

Thank you, Tully. Thanks for having me.

Asking for reviews feels awkward at first, but they're one of the most powerful tools for growing a trade business. We'll talk to Ryan about the right ways to ask for feedback, how to handle negative comments, and how reviews can directly help engineers like you find online and secure more jobs. As always, if you enjoy these conversations, please like and subscribe to the podcast. How do you kind of ask, or how do you do it in a, like, a systemized way? Because, you know, if you're a sole trader, you know, you're juggling a lot of stuff.

You are.

And how do you find the time for this kind of thing?

So our clients often don't have to. And that's, that's one of the reasons why they will use us. We have a suite of tools, shall we say, available to us that will manipulate or tweak for that business. So we look at the sector they're in, in your case, the trades, and we will advise on particular tools. And that might be we plug into their CRM. So when a particular stage of the job is completed, So it might be, let's say we can, when, when the, let's say they're using HubSpot or whatever it might be, your platform obviously is perfect for that. When it's in, when it's the point where you come to invoice, there might be a link in there or there might be a dedicated message that goes out when a certain point of the job is complete, is achieved. Equally, we find with, with face-to-face businesses, there's that human touch. So a relationship is formed. So we usually provide tradespeople NFC cards. And so that means—

So what is an NFC card?

So it's a near-field communication card. It's the same technology that we use to pay for things, where we use Oyster cards.

So it's just like a—

It's a tap and go. I've got some if you want me to show you. But literally, it's just the conversation will typically go along the lines of, and I think certain businesses with one-man bands, we'll talk directly to the owner. We actually train staff on this as well for certain businesses where they have multiple guys going out. And it's basically a part of the job role.

What do you actually do with it? How does it work?

Yeah, so the conversation, so, were you happy with the work you received today? Along those lines, doesn't have to be quite as robotic as that. Are you happy with everything? Yes, I am. Would you mind giving us some feedback while I'm here?

Okay, so you're actually there when they're giving the feedback?

They can be.

Yeah. Okay.

So we typically have 2 or 3 for each client.

Yeah.

So that if one is missed or the customer says, oh, can't quite right now or something like that. Okay, well, we're going to send you one later. Do you mind? It would really help us, not only for our business, but it helps us improve. And, you know, it's important you position why it's useful for the business. If you've got a good relationship, it would really help me. If it's more of a business conversation, then it would be, it would help us improve our offering. So yeah, we would often have that face-to-face opportunity.

How does the card actually work? So do you give the card or does it take to a website or?

So it's a plastic card, it'll be branded up for the company.

Yeah.

It'll say what it is. On the front of it, say, what do you think of our service? And I'll say, just, just, just tap and hold. So literally they just hold it against the phone, takes about 1.5 seconds, 1 second maybe. And then our customers, you'll be pulled up with a bespoke landing page which has their logo. And basically they choose the amount of stars. If it's 4 stars or above, it will then offer them the different platforms online. If it's 3 stars or below, it asks for feedback. Which goes directly into the platform.

Okay, so it kind of filters it out.

It protects for them, yeah.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, the key for that is businesses want to be able to fix problems, or they should want to fix problems. And it puts into the platform, it will have their email, phone number, so then the business can turn it around, would it turn it around, actually deal with it. We get a lot of clients that are able to turn those customers into, into 5-star, 4 or 5-star customers. I say, okay, would you mind reviewing us again? And then they go through. The key to that is that you're not having keyboard warrior conversations online with people as much as possible. Now, of course, people can still go directly to those platforms and leave the feedback, and that's a different conversation as to how you handle that feedback. Hi, Producer Alex here, wondering if you knew that you aren't subscribed to the channel. More specifically, 93% of you are not subscribed, and we really appreciate you tuning in right now. But you're missing out on even more interesting content. You're already this far into the episode, so why not subscribe to the Gas Engineers Software YouTube channel? Because showing your support genuinely makes a difference. It's free, takes a second to click, and helps us continue to make the content that you want to listen to. Speaking of, let's get back to it.

And how would you do it, like, um, say without your software, like, how would you kind of recommend, like, a sole trader how to ask for reviews and actually encourage customers to do it?

How to ask for reviews. I mean, you can prepare customers in advance. Would you be willing to give us some feedback if you like the work we do? When you're having the conversation with them. Sometimes it's a case of navigating how the relationship is going with that particular client, but it's really just getting comfortable with it. I think if it's like a sort of nervous end of the job, it's got a strange feel, you know, if you're able to to talk about the importance of getting customer feedback and why it's valuable to you as a business, I think customers, reasonable customers, will appreciate it. If you just sort of shoehorn it in at the end, I think that's harder. But for example, I've got a couple of trades who are very, very good, and when they're talking to the customers, they talk about how they're trying to improve all the time and how they value the customer feedback and the relationship, and they use various tools to help them with that. And so when the job finishes, the customer understands the reason why they want it, as opposed to, oh, not just another feedback request.

Okay, it's not just like a surprise at the end.

Exactly. So that's getting more mature in your process with, and I think the ones that are invested in it, they generally see some quite big gains.

Okay, so in the beginning you would kind of say, you know, as we go through, looking to improve, we want to hear from customers, we want to get the feedback, etc. Kind of set the groundwork, and then in the end you actually say, yeah, give us a review.

And what's wonderful about that is one of the net results of it is we've seen from— we've got a very popular franchise that use us, and they have KPIs around it, and they have incentives for the guys that get the most feedback in a particular quarter. And what they noticed was just levels of customer satisfaction going up, because when the guys are out in the field and they know they want something positive from the customer, their whole approach changes going into the job.

Okay.

So rather than sort of, if they're having a bad day, being a bit grumpy, hi, I'm here to do X, they walk in with a smile on their face. So the focus changes from getting the job done to actually providing a really good service end to end. So it's a psychological shift for the guys out in the field when they're incentivised. So that's a very interesting part of it. And yeah, it's been a nice byproduct of it.

Yeah, because the other challenge is you can say do all of that, but then there's a kind of, you know, the customers mean well, but then they just don't quite get around to doing the review.

Exactly. And that's why we're always looking at those ways to train or to coach the businesses that are doing it, because it's all about having these tools. If you don't use them or have a strategy for them. So we've got the technological strategy, which is what are the mechanisms and what are the touchpoints at which the customer will receive this request? But it's Yeah, so it's all, it's the human elements of it. Yeah.

How many kind of reviews, um, do you actually need? Um, as in, I would imagine there's a diminishing return. Like, if you've got like 1,000 reviews and you get 2 more reviews, it's probably not worth as much as getting like you've got 3 reviews and you get 2.

So it very much varies by sector, but on Google, for example, on the first page, when you put in gas engineer London, probably something smaller. Maidenhead, I don't know, right? Um, so, so, um, if you put that in, you'll get the— you get a couple of, a couple of sponsored links at the top, then you get Google, actual Google Ads, and then underneath that is what we call the map pack, which is typically 3. And there's a number of reasons why Google will show you those businesses, but those are, those are free. That's based on your location, on keywords, and on feedback. So how relevant are you to, in Google's eyes, to that, to those 'Gas engineer Maidenhead,' what your location is. But the most highly rated businesses will, will be favored on there as well. So if you, if you, if even if you're not necessarily 100% the closest, if you're highly rated, they'll, if they'll put you higher and they're more likely to put you on there. Now that is a hell of a spot to have on page 1 on Google without paying, without having to pay every single click, because Google of course just want to be fed money.

Yeah.

And so highly rated businesses will get obviously more click-throughs, more calls, and it'll benefit their SEO, their search engine optimization, quite significantly when done properly. And what we see with trades for sure is that the ones that do focus on it win big because the vast majority don't have a strategy and aren't focused on driving that feedback.

Okay, so if we, if we were to answer the question like how many reviews you actually need, yeah, so you would actually— I'm guessing, but you would actually look at your competitors and then do like a bit more than them?

A little bit, yeah. I mean, Google starts to take you more seriously when you get to 100.

Okay.

Yeah, that's definitely, definitely a factor. But equally, there's other areas within it that, that we would coach our clients on, and we're going to be releasing soon, um, a YouTube video, YouTube series on it where we explain the likes of— I mean, for example, you have to respond to every review. I've got— we've had clients that have come in and never responded to a review.

So even if you get like a good review, you need to—

and there's an opportunity within your responses to optimise your search capability as well. So you should be— obviously there's a few things. The things that are top of, top of mind really are that you should be trying to demonstrate your relationship with the client because everyone wants to see that there's a nicely, nice engaged person and they're friendly and they don't know who this stranger is coming to their house. So if they can see a nice relationship with the customers, so it might be, thank you for your wonderful review, Betty. You're— we look forward to seeing you and your 'gorgeous dog again,' you know, just that kind of thing.

Just anything that shows that you went there.

But equally, you want to be, 'we're delighted we're able to fix your boiler at your lovely home in South Mimms,' you know, whatever it might be. So the keywords are in there. So you've got location, product, relationship.

Okay. And then, but on a basic sense, you're, if you just kind of answered like, yeah, okay, you could do it extreme and do it really organized. But if you just replied to all of them in a human way, as if you were having a conversation, would that help? Like, as in—

Absolutely. I guess really what I'm saying is 100% reply. Yeah. But there's also opportunities if you're willing to, to add more to it. And we have, we've got AI responses in the platform, but we would always advise our customers to use that. It's really there as a tool for busy, busy people. It spits out, there's various length answers they can have. We say to them, use it as a starting point. But tailor it and try and show, show that you aren't using just an AI response tool, which is— there's no relationship demonstrated there.

Okay, and then, um, to, to actually test where you are kind of ranking, I'm guessing you go into something like incognito, um, on your browser, and then you would search for—

absolutely. But I mean, yeah, and even that will vary, but, but yes, that would be, that would be a good way. We obviously are able to show we have a dashboard that we're able to show the kind of conversion rate that's coming through. And yeah, it's like anything online, it's not an instant fix, but it will certainly over a period of months. We had an electrician company that had, I think, 8 reviews and they were sitting on it for a short while. Within a month they'd added another 20 and they ask every customer when they phone where they'd heard of them. And this happened a few times actually. And this particular, I mean, within 2 weeks they were getting calls and they said, where'd you get us? Where'd you find us? And they said, Google Maps. So on Matpak on the front of Google.

Okay, um, so this is a bit of a tangent, but how did you actually start the business? What kind of caused you to do this?

Yeah, I mean, we had a quite a few— we've been doing marketing for, for clients for a long time. We've had agencies and things like that, and it was one that we knew we could see from the algorithm that Google was leaning more to social proof, and we could see that, well, like I say, with Amazon and all these things, how much weight it was putting on it, onto, onto that feedback. I wasn't very happy with the tools that were out there, and So we started to work on it and see if we could solve it and test it out with a few clients. And it was really, really well received. They just loved the simplicity of it. And yeah, it evolved over about a year and it just got— we picked up a big franchise right off the bat and they said, this is exactly what we needed and automate everything. And they love the NFC. And it was— it's been a fairly smooth process. And we're trying not to— there are a lot of feature requests, but we're trying to not go down that rabbit hole too much because we're trying to keep it simple. We want a simple tool that helps businesses for a specific task.

Yeah, because the concept behind it, get more reviews, it's a pretty straightforward thing, but the actual mechanics of it, as in, you know, remembering to do it, etc., there is a bit of nuance in there because if it was so easy, obviously all the companies would have it.

Yeah, and that's the bit that we're— that's the bit that most struggle with. So once we can automate those things, either they can use our links, they can use— each location has a QR code as well they can use. Some use that on marketing, on business cards. We've got the NFC, we've got email, SMS, WhatsApp, whatever, wherever they— where their— wherever their customers live, we can—

you can help—

we can help them send the requests. Yeah.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that you kind of see with asking for reviews or just handling the reviews?

I've seen a couple of customers go to war which doesn't— no one wins. It's a—

and you can't get rid of those reviews, can you?

You can, but it's very difficult. Uh, you have to really justify yourself. If— let's just take Google, for example. If you can show them and demonstrate that there's— it's sort of a bit of business sabotage, Google can often check IP addresses. And we've seen customers have 8 to 10 removed, though clearly from a competitor.

Is that a common thing though? For—

it's more common than you think, but it's so personal to search. So to certain businesses. Even one bad review can be so personal because this, you know, these business owners, they get up, they blood, sweat, and tears, don't see their kids in the week, you know, they're working their tails off. And someone might have a bit of a keyboard warrior moment about something that maybe really wasn't their fault. It could be about a bit of lateness, you know, caught up in traffic, who knows. And of course that becomes really personal so they can go on the attack back and you just can't do that. It's just, you can, but it's not, not advised.

How should you handle those kind of reviews?

Yeah, so the first thing is to obviously fully understand what happened and make sure you don't rush to your response. Make sure you have a full understanding of what happened. And if you're able to articulately explain the process and what had happened, equally if there's— but do it in a professional manner. So it could be that with the greatest of respect, we've checked this job, We either don't know who you are, or this was the circumstance that happened, you know, and then, and equally, if you've done wrong, hold your hands up and say, we regret the situation.

Would you actually call the customer prior if it was a real customer to responding to the review?

Absolutely. I mean, I personally would. Some won't, and they'll just, whether they don't have the relationship with them or the customer won't speak to them. But don't forget, it is of course resolving the matter with the customer, but This is about marketing now. This is more about what the public are going to see.

So the kind of the optics of—

this is like the political side of it really, that you have to—

yeah, yeah.

When people read this, we have customers that are absolutely adamant they can't have any bad reviews. How do we get rid of this? And actually, you really demonstrate what you're about as a business and/or a person in how you respond to difficult feedback. So that's the mindset to have when you're thinking about it, you know, when you're— what, what other— how are other people going to view this conversation?

So when you're writing it, you're not actually writing it for that customer, you're writing it for a bit of both, I think.

Yeah, yeah, I think you've certainly got to appease the customer.

Yeah.

But you equally got to bear in mind that people are going to read this. So what, what impression are they going to, are they going to have of you when they read that? And it's completely fine if, if you see a business with you know, mixed reviews, most good, but there's a few that are a bit sort of iffy. You'll have a look at those bad reviews and you'll see how the business responds, and you kind of go— I mean, you must have done it yourself, um, but you look at it, you think, actually, there's nothing in that.

If the business— like, this is— I'm talking personally— if the business takes ownership of it, yeah, this might be— this is from a personal point of view, but if I see lots of 'we don't know who you are,' I kind of I don't know, I'm a bit hesitant about that.

When I said about that bit, I mean that we've got clients that have had bad reviews and they generally don't know who these people are and they can't find them. So they call it out.

They do call it out, but it's a really difficult thing.

Well, but they will specifically say, we've checked all our databases, we have no record of you as a customer. We've had that quite a lot, surprisingly a lot. Yeah, a lot. I don't know, they often pick the wrong business or they, you know, there's also I struggle to understand what, how that happens. We would love to speak to you about this matter so we can get to the bottom of it. It's that kind of thing.

That's a nicer one than saying we don't know who you are.

Oh no, there'd always be the top and tail of it, but yeah, absolutely. But equally, if they do hold their hands up like you say and just say we would love to resolve this matter at the earliest opportunity, this is not— and then reinforce the values of the business. We strive to provide an exceptional level of service. We certainly don't want any unhappy customers. We'd love to solve the problem. And I think when you sort of see those responses, it's understandable.

Like if there was some context saying we were late because of an emergency plumbing job just prior to you, or there was an overrun—

we did notify you, it's that kind of thing.

Yeah, we let you know. I understand that you were late for work.

It's finding that balance of 'we do have an excuse, but we do apologize.' And yeah, it's not—

yeah, it's trying to—

we're sorry we inconvenienced you, is that kind of thing?

Yeah, yeah. But, but yeah, as long as it doesn't— it's not an excuse, but it's—

yeah, it's a balance. It's a very—

it's difficult.

It's a hard line to tread. But I would definitely really, you know, if you're feeling angry about— if you're a small business and you're a one-man band or anything like that and you're feeling angry about it, take a night. Yeah, sleep on it. Or write something and sleep on it, but don't send it straight away. See how it reads the next day.

Yeah, get a second opinion.

But we'll be doing some content on this coming up very soon.

Okay, yeah, it's just tricky.

It really is.

And, you know, if you're passionate about your business—

It can hurt.

Yeah, you take it— well, it's easier to take it personally. Any other kind of big mistakes that you kind of see that people could possibly make?

I mean, obviously the biggest mistake is just not having a plan with it. But, um, I think, yeah, ignore— just not responding.

So just diving into that not having a plan, because when you do a search for heating and plumbing engineers, you know, from my personal experience, you see, you know, there's like 3 reviews, 5 reviews, or you'll see like 10 reviews but they're all done in the same month. This thing about having a plan, you know, just space them out. Like, this is from me personally, space them out a little bit.

It's hard to do that, so you have to just It's either— that's where the consistency comes in. And equally, you might see one that had— maybe they were consistent or had a flurry of, but it was a year ago. That doesn't tell the customer anything about what you're like. People, people want to see. So we created our website widgets where they come into the platform and they're automatic. We set a script according to what the client wants, to which ones will get fed into the website. So customers will come to your site and they will— they want to see this a very, very quick decision the customer is making when they're looking at a business. They don't want to be spending hours. They're going to be looking at a couple of businesses. They're honing it down. I'm looking at this business. And when they can see on our client sites that the customers, they're looking, the customer is looking for themselves in previous customers. That's the psychology. You want to see yourself. So they're saying, are there customers like me getting served with a high level right now in my area with my particular problem? And if they can see that, And it's consistent. And it's consistent and it's recent, you're going to convert.

So the real key here is that consistency.

Consistency. The customer seeing themselves in a consistent way. Can they see multiple examples of a persona like you being served right now, whether that be geographical or whether that be, you know, particular like or dislike of product or service, you know.

Would you, like for a gas engineer just starting out, would you suggest focusing on just one platform first or like, like, how would you kind of—

so the most bang for your buck will be Google.

Uh, this is just for clarity, this is Google, uh, reviews on the, on your business, Google Business Profile. So you need to set up your Google Business Profile first.

Yep.

And then that gets mapped, that gets shown on the maps.

Correct. Yeah, so it's Google Maps.

Um, and if you have a Google account, you can just sign up, or Google how to set up your Google profile.

Absolutely. We've got various content on our site about how to, how to do that. Google Business Profile, I would say, would be the starting point. The main reason is that a lot of the other platforms, for example, like Trustpilot and everything, they're just trying to pull cash out of you, so they will reward you the more you pay them. Google have no incentive. They want the content, they want to be the first port of call for customer interactions.

How does, um, Trustpilot work?

So it's, it's a, it's a, or similar to it. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's similar to Google. It's a closed environment. Where they only want your feedback for your business coming into their platform, then they'll feed it out into different places. That, that you— they become the, the keeper of all your customer feedback. The problem with it is that they then own the data. It is yours, but it's theirs. If they decide to switch it off, that's what— that's, that's their choice.

But you have a similar challenge with Google, don't you? But I guess they're less financially incentivized to—

yeah, they, they can suspend accounts, but you you can get them unsuspended quite easily, providing you haven't done anything nefarious. They want lots of feedback on their platform, but they want it to be the most optimized place for your customer feedback, and they aren't looking to be financially rewarded for it. So Trustpilot are looking for you to embed yourself into their ecosystem and then hopefully upsell you onto their— because they limit what you can do on the free plan.

Okay.

So a lot of our customers have gone from small amounts to become solely reliant on it and end up paying many many, many hundreds of pounds a month to Trustpilot because they feel like they can't do it, can't do without it. And the tools that you get on the, on the paid versions far outweigh. And then you can get the integrations with your website where it shows your, your ratings, and you can't get that on the free plan. So they're looking to, to— it's a, it's a business. It's a business. And listen, many of the things that Trustpilot do is very good, but there is a big financial requirement as you move up the ladder.

So you just need to be conscious which way that you're going to go.

Yeah, I mean, I think for one-man bands, Google's a no-brainer. I'd probably get profiles on, on the other ones, but equally the trade sites, you know, we do custom integrations with, with, with, uh, we send traffic to Checkatrade and Trust the Trader and things like that as well. So, but I would, again, those platforms would encourage you to pay. And so I would say you've got to think about each of those locations are another click. Customers don't want— they want to type into Google what they're after and see what they see, see what they find, the service they need right then and there. To go to another website is another step. And that's what people— that's, that's in marketing. We talk about the fewest steps possible. So if you are there, bright and shiny, highly rated, link to your site on the maps, on the maps, you didn't pay for location, you can see website, you can see good feedback. That's where— that's the most powerful location for you to be. Many businesses, we have clients that have integrated 3 or 4 platforms and they might switch them on and off at different times. Let's give Trust a Trader a push, let's give Facebook a push. But I wouldn't spread yourself too thin. I would focus on one or two as a— because it gets difficult to handle.

Yeah, well, the other thing is like if you have, say, 10 reviews on 3 different, 4 different sites, you know, that's not going to be as powerful as getting like 50 or 60 reviews.

Absolutely. So I mean, I would, I would say to most trades, your most bang for buck long term will be Google.

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For sure, the best time to ask for a review request is right after a job is completed, when the customer's satisfied. Obviously, we know that if you If you wait more than 48 hours, the response rates drop by about 50%.

Do the customers ever feel like slightly pressured if you are there while they're actually doing the review?

Yeah, I mean, it can be maybe while you're packing your stuff away, or it could be literally as you leave. I don't think it's a case of asking them to write it as you're stood in front of them. So it's, there's a bit of kind of working out of the timing there, you know.

I guess as you practice, you get, if you're reading the room—

Exactly that. And some people are really natural at it. And yeah, and this is where if you start to see a pattern, it might be a case of, like we spoke about the, I'm going to ask for some feedback later. I've got, when you get to the end of the job, you might say, well, if you tap this, you can actually do it now. And if they say, oh, no problem, there'll be a link in our invoice and we'll send you a text message, but we really appreciate the feedback. It helps us. Incredible. It helps us as a small business, helps us a great deal. And that's, that's just being polite, respectful, and asking a genuine— and if you, if you go about and ask these questions in the right way, certainly don't be afraid of it. They're expecting you to be commercial, um, so don't be afraid of it. And the vast majority of people are decent. And what we do know is though, I think it's fair to say that if you just ask once, your conversion rate will be far less than if you have multiple mechanisms to do it. So, oh, that's no problem, we don't mind if you're busy now, you've got to go and do something. Well, we'll send you a text message later.

So you're pre-warning them that there's a text message coming?

But yes, but even some businesses don't and they still get decent returns. But, but I would say you want to have at least 2 or 3 touch points. So the card on the— on for the— for trades, on card on the job for sure. Text message probably best for trades, I would say. And then have links elsewhere. So for example, on your invoice.

Has there been any research around the impact of reviews?

There's been a lot of research. We know that 92% of homeowners read online reviews before hiring a tradesperson. It's massive. And Google themselves will have put out a report recently where they say that over 80% of UK consumers have chosen a plumber or heating engineer based on reviews. I mean, these are just—

so people are looking at reviews before the even website.

If they don't know the business, they are 9 out of 10 times looking at reviews. And this is the competitive competitive advantage that a lot of businesses just aren't taking advantage of, particularly if they're good at their service. And the amount of businesses we see that are superb at what they do, but they have no way of telling anyone else.

It's top secret.

It's almost top secret. And that is a travesty for, I mean, for tradespeople we know that are blood, sweat, and tears through their business and really, really, really provide an amazing service. For God's sake, take advantage of that feedback.

Well, from the customer's point of view, you are inviting somebody into your house. You've never met them before. They're an expert.

Trust is vital. Trust is an absolutely vital part of that, of that, that, that proposition and that, that process. Whether it's a woman buyer, decision maker, or it's a man, we all want someone coming through into our business or our home that is reputable, trustworthy, and does a good job. And the one way we can definitely, definitely have a lot, be a lot closer to understanding if this, this particular provider is like that is by reading consistently good feedback based on the service that you, you provide.

Yeah, and from a source that you trust.

From a source that you trust.

Anything else that would be useful for sort of gas engineers, for, you know, just revolving around reviews, getting them, making the most of them?

Make sure you take advantage of them. So, so this is, you know, like I said to you, like I said to you earlier, you know, every business will shout about itself, but this is a huge marketing asset. So we obviously have a number of widgets that go on people's sites, from the discreet little sidebar that just shows your star ratings, to pop-ups, to carousels that just have that sort of feed through the site. We have all sorts of tools like that. And equally, we have social media sharing. You can choose any of the reviews and then we post them to social. We obviously package them up nicely for you to go on social media.

But these are things you could do yourself if you wanted to.

You could do, but we obviously— it's one click and it's packaged up ready to move. It's one click and straight into social media. We we can also auto-post those as well and use that spare— use that as part of a social media mix. Just reviews coming out all the time isn't what you want. You can download them from— a lot of clients download them for, for their literature, for their marketing. So, okay, this is the service we provide. Often they have a little kind of carousel at the bottom showing that, you know, and again, this is the social proof. These are these tiny little psychological nudges, you know. We see much higher conversion when we put these things into people's sites. They get more click-throughs, they get higher higher callbacks because it's human. So, you know, if you land on someone's website or destination and you see them as a highly rated business right now with actual people and they're coming from credible sources. So not just someone has a site, puts in 10 reviews, and often you see the ones you often use. This is so typical. We see so many businesses that have websites built. The website developer puts in their 10 latest reviews. And so you land on their site and it says, oh, these guys were great, but it's 2021. So having that, having that consistency and right now is so important and, you know, recent and good quality protected. Also, we have video feedback for some. We have video feedback as well, which clients can do. It's harder to get people to do it in certain sectors. It works great, but all of these assets are things you can use in your marketing.

So the top of the funnel or the main source is getting these reviews. Once you've got them, just use them on your quotes, your invoice, not your— what, just all the marketing.

Just, you know, make sure you understand the value of them because they're really, really, really important. You know, again, I keep going back, but every business will tell you how great it is. The businesses that are highly rated will stand out, so don't be afraid to show it.

It kind of sounds like it comes across that for the business owners, sole traders, you know, just if they truly understood the value of these reviews and the difference that it would actually make to their business is probably— would you say that's one of the most important things?

Yeah. And we see a lot of trades quite shocked actually as to what it can do. And if you've got— it can in certain sectors, it can be very competitive in certain areas between trades. It can be very, very competitive. You might have 2 or 3 businesses that really get it. But yeah, it's, it's the ones that grab hold of it. If they consistently with it, with it for 6 months, they might see a significant change in their business.

From personal experience, where I live, when you look at the reviews for Gas Engineers, you see maybe 5, 7 reviews. 12 reviews would be really high, right? So it's not— yeah, I don't think the bar is that high.

And this is— we see this in a lot of sectors. Some areas, a couple of, you know, some areas we'll see, oh, we've got 2 or 3 businesses here that switched on to it. But if you have a good mechanism, you're doing— what's a typical amount of jobs that, that gas engineers would do in a day, let's say during the peak season, during the winter months?

It depends. It depends what kind of work. If they're doing installs, obviously it's a lot less.

Yeah. But if they're just doing, um, if we average it out to what, 2 or 3 a day?

No, more than that. Yeah, if you're doing gas, um, certs or something, um, yes, you could do— I don't know, if you're doing a CP12, you can maybe do like 4 or 5 depending on the travel times, the sensors. If it was flat, it'd be obviously quicker.

So let's imagine, let's imagine then we've got, um, so they're doing certificates, are they?

Yeah.

So let's imagine they're doing 5 jobs a day. If you've got a 20% conversion rate, that's 30 reviews a month.

That would push you higher than—

that would literally put you higher than Top Dog, or certainly within the top 3 in a very short space of time. If you're a small business locally, um, serving customers, you'll be top dog instantly. You're obviously, you're your Google ranking will increase on, on Map Pack, but your SEO will go through the roof as well because it's, it's basically Google wants— so Google's whole job is to serve businesses that it think— it thinks its customers, who is us using Google, will appreciate. So it rewards businesses that are, that are good quality, and one of those metrics is what their customers say. So all of these things, it will start to reward you. Not just that, if you ever want to do ads, if you're a highly rated business, your cost of your ads goes down. So there's all of these elements sort of in there. There's all these hidden reasons why you do it. But if you think about it in that way, the conversion rate, if you're doing a number of jobs a day and you have a process and a way of communicating customers you can get comfortable with, things can turn around very, very quickly. You can go from a once a month rated business to multiples of 10 of that and very, very quickly surpass your competitors quite drastically. But it's just having that process and having that mindset and having a system.

Yeah, and obviously these reviews live forever. You need to actually keep carrying on with them. But, you know, even if you got, say, 2 a week, you know, that would just make a huge difference.

It would. You know, you're talking about over 100 a month, over 100 a year. So it's, yeah, it's powerful.

Well, thank you very much for coming on the show, Ryan.

You're most welcome.

I really appreciate that. And thanks for your insights. Thank you.