Plumbers live or die by their reputations.
It’s why plumbers spend money on nice van wraps and updated logos. The most successful plumbing businesses invest in skilled technicians and commit to high standards. The savviest ones pay for modern websites and set up social media profiles.
You are your reputation. Your employees are your reputation. Your trucks are your reputation. Your website is your reputation. Everything speaks.
However, as customers have grown savvier, the landscape has changed. It isn’t just nice logos and word-of-mouth that build a business over time. Customers only consider hiring plumbers who get good reviews; for most plumbers, that will mean at minimum 40 customer reviews—and if you have a couple bad reviews, you’ll need even more to get a high average rating.
“I’ve been in business for over 10 years,” you might say. “I’ve got plenty of good reviews.” Sure—but consider that 73% of potential clients only pay attention to reviews written in the last month. Every week, the relevance of your most recent reviews goes down. If you want to compete, you need to become a review generation machine. Simple as that.
Having a constant stream of positive reviews online plays a pivotal role in generating new business. 85% of people—including general contractors and building companies—trust online reviews as much as word-of-mouth. And half of your potential clients will require a four-star rating minimum to even consider contracting you.
In truth, review generation is what separates the major players from the one-man plumbing companies. Customers don’t know your skill or experience—all they know is how many reviews you get and how highly rated you are.
So, you need a steady flow of good reviews. How do you build that?
Simple: you ask.
Asking for Reviews Builds Businesses
The good news is getting positive reviews is already stacked in your favor. One BrightLocal survey revealed 67% of customers considered leaving a review after a positive experience, while 40% said they considered leaving a review after a negative one. While only 1 in 14 people exclusively write bad reviews, 1 in 3 exclusively write good ones.
In other words, most reviewers like leaving good ratings.
But getting reviews is even simpler than that: 53% of customers are likely to leave a rating if you just ask. If a customer had a positive experience, that likelihood shoots up to 88%. Let’s say you served 60 happy customers last month—if you sent out an email or text asking them for reviews, you could potentially generate between 30 and 50 positive reviews.
That’s massive.
“How Many Recent Reviews Do I Need?”
Statistically, people only trust average ratings for businesses that have more than 40 total reviews. But how many of those have to be recent?
Typically, people want to read at least seven reviews written in the last month before they trust a business’ online reputation. That’s why it’s so vital to have a regular supply of positive reviews coming in—in many cases, clients will only trust you as much as your most recent customers. Failing to keep positive reviews flowing is potentially leaving business on the table.
However, even a negative review can be an opportunity to win potential business. The key—regardless of the review’s star rating—is how quickly you respond.
Why Responding to Reviews Can Help You Generate More Business
We’ve already shared a game-changing, low-effort, and no-cost way for plumbers to build their online reputation. But there’s a second practice that can multiply your efforts even more: quick responses to reviews.
Google makes your business more visible when you have more “review signals,” which consists of review quantity, diversity, and velocity. The more consistent your review generation is, the higher your business will rank in local search results. More visibility means more business over time.
“Sure,” you might say. “But why respond to reviews?”
For one thing, your replies and comments are a review signal. So if you take the time to respond to every review, you’re effectively doubling the review signals Google is using to determine how to rank your business.
For another, online review replies help develop client trust, including potential clients who read your replies later. Google data says that searchers are almost twice as likely to trust a business that responds to reviews over one that doesn’t, and 9 out of 10 people will read your response. Surveys show that over half of reviewers expect a reply within a week.
Quick Replies Can Undo Negative Reviews, Study Finds
A recent study on consumer behavior found that 33% of reviewers who left a negative review changed their rating after getting a response, and 34% simply deleted their review. If you quickly and politely respond to reviews on a regular basis, you could potentially reduce your negative review count by 67%!
Anyone who works in client service knows that people just want to be heard. That’s what most negative reviews are—a demand to be heard and understood. A speedy and sincere response ensures they feel heard, and can potentially turn an upset reviewer into a client for life. Over a timeline of 10 or 15 years, you could leverage untold amounts of revenue just from careful management of your online reputation.
Tools for Plumbers to Build Their Online Reputation
The data makes it clear: review requests and responses bring in more business.
That’s why we’ve built those functions directly into our Reputation Suite in Plumbers.AI. Our system allows plumbers to send an automated review request whenever a job is finished or an invoice is paid. Just set it and forget it—the system will build the review generation workflow you need automatically. Once the reviews start flowing in, you can reply to each one from your Unified Inbox, where your response will appear on whatever platform the review was published.
Easier for you and better for customers—the ideal solution for plumbers.
