Reviews come when you ask for them. So ask.
While Online Reviews for products are overwhelmingly positive the same should not be said for reviews found in other areas. Take a look at the list of apartment communities in the SF/ Bay Area below and you’ll see that none passes the 3.5 star mark – a low ranking by any standard.
The reason for this is not however bad apartments (though there certainly are some). The culprit is in fact something much simpler to remedy – a lack of information. It goes without saying that if you don’t know to do something, you won’t and apartment ratings are one thing few people know about until they chose to review a new home. What if instead of waiting for people to find their way to reviews apartment companies put a sheet in with their lease renewal and termination packages that offered a $25 gift card or rent discount for leaving a comment on their site, apartment ratings or another platform? What if rather than doing door tags every month about referring friends they directed people to a facebook-connect powered page asking to talk about where they live.
And you don’t need a lease to get people writing reviews. Product inserts, thank you notes for loyal customers, links on your email footers, website or any other communication piece is an opportunity to tell people that you’d like them to leave a review and give them a reason too.
Most customers but good experience and good experiences are not what people think about sharing. We’ve all heard adages like 10 bad comments for every 1 good and whether or not this is the exact number the sentiment is true. People gripe when there is a reason to and far fewer jump in when they don’t have something to vent. There’s nothing bad about asking people to lead a review and if done right, nothing underhanded either. Compensating everyone for a review is a fair statement. Positive, negative, it’s all a review and all gets the same treatment. No one can fault you for that.
And this issue isn’t limited to apartments – all sorts of niche businesses face a similar challenge from Vacation Homes to local Bakeries. If customers don’t know they can leave a review the odds are they won’t. Unless of course they have an experience so bad they can’t stop themselves from talking about it.
