Reputation Management

Another way to counteract negative reviews is to ask for positive ones. Flammer thinks remodelers should stop being shy and regularly ask happy customers to provide positive reviews. Remodelers should make it easy; they could include a link directly to an online review site within an electronic communication or invoice, for example. “We have happy customers but it isn’t a priority to ask them for reviews,” she says. “Establish a plan for asking for positive reviews because it will greatly help mitigate the bad.”

Flammer is adamantly against creating fake email accounts and posting your own positive online reviews. “You must be transparent and ethical, even if the negative reviewer isn’t,” she says.

Controlling Search Results

If you have a particularly unhappy customer, negative reviews can get out of hand quickly. Flammer has seen homeowners launch smear campaigns through blogs and websites with addresses like www.[insert name of remodeler]sucks.com. “The building industry is weird; people get mad over such little things,” she says. “One of the builders we worked with offered to buy the house back from the unhappy customer, but he didn’t want to sell it; he wasn’t unhappy with his house. The unfortunate reality is there are some crazy people out there.”

There are ways to control your search results so when someone uses a search engine to locate your company, page one is completely clear of negative activity. “By launching a series of sites, like a Facebook page, Twitter, adding your own Wordpress blog, making sure your website is highly optimized, creating a ‘name of your business reviews site’ and putting it on Blogger.com and adding two or three happy customer reviews per month, you can start to populate your own search results,” Flammer says. “When my firm helps a remodeler with online reputation management, we can’t make the unhappy person’s negative website go away, but we can push it far enough on the search results that it lessens the chance that a prospect or new customer is going to find it.”

Flammer says an online reputation management campaign can become a full-time job and may require hiring a staff person or a firm that specializes in reputation management. “Oftentimes, ‘unhappy Joe’ is posting daily or weekly, and it does become a full-time job when it’s a campaign of that level,” Flammer adds. “It involves checking the sites daily, posting new content and focusing on search-engine optimization.”

Normandy Remodeling handles its online reputation management in-house and has found that its social media presence has resulted in work for the firm. “Being proactive online is important because it’s really driving credibility, search-engine optimization and it’s getting us jobs,” Wells says. “We just sold a kitchen in Oak Park, Ill., in which the client found us through a Facebook connection in Pennsylvania. Social media channels help us push out good, solid information to the public, like tips, photos and advice. This keeps Normandy Remodeling top of mind when someone in our network needs remodeling or one of their friends’ friends needs work.”

Avoiding Fear

After discussing her experience with other contractors and subcontractors in her area, Jane Smith has learned she is not the only one who has encountered an online smear campaign with little or no warning. She fears consumers are using the threat of posting negative reviews to avoid paying for home-improvement work. “In Arizona, the last four years have been more than a recession for contractors, especially small contractors. It has been very painful,” she says. “When you see a trend developing where there are unscrupulous clients who are picking on contractors when they’re down, anything we can do as a group to protect ourselves is important.”

According to Flammer, the best way for remodelers to protect themselves is to ensure clients are happy by establishing a feedback system during and after construction, creating a social media presence and asking for positive reviews from happy clients. When a negative review appears, remodelers should provide a thoughtful response that will help Web users recognize they care about their customers and want to assuage their grievances.

Even Jane can attest that most discerning people will recognize an unstable reviewer when they read his or her review. Her experience actually generated more business from the unhappy customer’s homeowners association. “The association has apologized for him and said they value the work we’ve done in the neighborhood,” she says. “I think it’s their way of saying this isn’t going to hurt our relationship.”