At HomeStars, we never miss a chance to drive home the value of customer reviews. We’ve written about how customer reviews can strengthen your HomeStars profile, explained how to respond to reviews when they come in, and offered tips to make it easier to request reviews once a job is complete. Needless to say, we believe reviews are critical to the success of your business and the key ingredient to unlocking the full potential of your HomeStars account.
Overwhelmingly, the numbers support this. According to Spiegel, nearly 95% of customers read reviews before making a purchase, and products that have five or more reviews have a 270% higher chance of being purchased.
Now, thanks to a June 2021 survey of homeowners who use HomeStars, we have even more data to share. In addition to reinforcing what we already know — that homeowners consider reviews heavily when hiring pros on HomeStars — the results of this survey tell us what types of reviews homeowners respond to positively, how often they write reviews themselves, and the quality of service pros need to offer to get homeowners to write complimentary reviews of their work.
Below you’ll find a list of the five most interesting takeaways from this year’s Review Behaviour Survey:
The Results Are In—Reviews Matter
If you’ve yet to make a habit of requesting reviews from your customers, you have an incredible opportunity ahead of you to start transforming your business today. Of the homeowners we surveyed, a whopping 98.7% said they read reviews of products or services before they purchase them. Start requesting additional reviews on HomeStars to educate potential clients about the quality of your work, distinguish yourself from your competitors, and create an impression of credibility. Unsure how to get started? Here’s a handy guide.
Reviews Are a Volume Game
Today’s consumers want to be as educated as possible about the quality of your work before they hire you. In other words, there’s no such thing as too many reviews. Per our recent survey, over 54% of homeowners say they read over five reviews before they make a hiring decision. Additionally, when two pros have similar Star Scores and average ratings, customers will typically hire the pro with a higher number of reviews. This is because it suggests their average rating and Star Score have held up over a larger number of jobs.
Reviewing Is Becoming a Habit
In today’s digital age, customers think about writing reviews as a standard part of their purchasing process. They purchase a good or service, decide whether they’re satisfied with its quality, and then go online to inform other customers of their findings. Of the homeowners we surveyed, 85.5% of them said they write online reviews for products or services between somewhat often to very often, and 69.4% of these people say they choose to write these reviews because they “liked the product and wanted to let others know about it.” Don’t hesitate to ask homeowners to review your services once your job is complete. There’s an 85.5% chance they were going to anyway.
It Can’t Hurt to Send a Little Reminder
If a homeowner hasn’t reviewed your work on HomeStars, don’t read too much into this. There’s a good chance they just forgot. According to our survey, nearly 45% of homeowners cite forgetting or being short on time as the primary reason they didn’t review the last pro they worked with on HomeStars. It can’t hurt to send a gentle reminder. Here’s a short video that explains how to send a review request in the HomeStars for Pros app.
Reputation Is Everything
According to our survey, the primary reason homeowners use HomeStars is to ensure the company they’re hiring is the right choice for the job. It’s not surprising, then, that most homeowners weigh reputation above other factors like “ease and quickness of communication” and “cost of work” in making their hiring decisions. It’s yet another reason to request reviews on HomeStars. The more reviews you have, the easier it’ll be for homeowners to find out where you stand.
The Final Tally
HomeStars 2021 Review Behaviour Survey takes an idea we’ve long known to be true — that homeowners value reviews — and confirms it to be undeniable. Beyond this, it tells us why homeowners care about reviews (to assess your reputation before hiring) and that they care strongly enough about reviews to favour pros with more reviews over fewer.
Best of all, the survey’s results tell us that homeowners don’t mind writing reviews the way pros often assume they do. This means that you don’t have to think twice about requesting reviews from your customers. You can capitalize on all the benefits reviews have to offer, confident there are no downsides.
