3 Ways Your Contractors Can Kill a Potential 5-Star Review

Most restoration companies, if they’ve been in business long enough, have been subject to a 1-Star, bad customer review. No company can hide from scorned customers leaving reviews online when they feel they haven’t received the service they felt they deserved.

We analyzed over 1,000 bad reviews left on Google for restoration companies across North America, and the lessons we uncovered prove that any one factor can nuke an otherwise good experience, but also that almost every issue is solvable.

One of the most common reasons we found customers were inclined to leave a bad review was "contractor drama" -  a remarkably negative interaction between a customer and a frontline worker. Whether they’re officially members of your team or just sub-contractors, they will have a massive influence on a customer's positive or negative experience.

1. Moral and Ethical Concerns On The Job Site

One common factor from our analysis was customers reporting moral and or ethical concerns about a contractor. This includes accusations of theft, substance abuse, intoxication, and even stories of a spouse cheating with their contractor.

Yikes.

Whether these reviews left on Google are true or not is somewhat irrelevant: either way, it’s still visible to the public eye and reflects poorly on the business. For instance, this review shows just how important it is to vet your contractors before they even start the job, and have well-defined processes for employee conduct:

“They came out to some of our units after a water flood. During the process of removing the wet flooring, the temp workers stole items from several of our units. The temporary workers stole items from more than one unit. They also appeared intoxicated. Some of the missing items included alcohol. It was a mess and awful. The police came out, just a complete circus.”

Once again, yikes.

The key learning any business can take away from an unfortunate incident like this is the need to have tightly defined processes surrounding hiring, employee discipline, customer service expectations, and more.