WANT TO BRING YOUR “REVIEW GAME” TO THE NEXT LEVEL? THEN LISTEN IN AS IAN & DAVID DISCUSS THE INS AND OUTS OF REVIEWS IN THIS WEEK’S EPISODE!

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Beon DeNood: 0:00
This is Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

Ian Robertson: 0:12
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. So you know what’s a special day when we have David the Swede on. How are you D avid?

David Nyman: 0:19
I’m doing well, thanks, and you know I’m going to rate your introduction there as a four out of five, much better than the last try.

Ian Robertson: 0:28
So that’s a good segue into our podcast about ratings. But you know, i’ve been trying to work on my intros because it’s like how do you introduce yourself, how do you introduce the wonderful world of Inspector Toolbelt Talk in such a way that keeps it interesting each time?

David Nyman: 0:46
And encapsulate the whole episode, the meat episode, into a small little sentence.

Ian Robertson: 0:51
Yeah, exactly. Well, i think you did it by giving me a rating. You know, i think I could have gotten a little bit better than four out of five, but you know what, next time I’ll try and do better. Thank you for your feedback. How was that response? How about eight and a half out of ten? Eight and a half out of ten? That’s slightly better. That’s four and a quarter. Are we going to quarter stars now? Well, thank you for being on, david. I really appreciate you being here. You know, i thought you’d be a good person to talk about this subject because I have said it before in this podcast, you have a skill that is extremely important and it’s a people skill, but not just a people skill. Like I have people skills to a certain extent. Like I can meet somebody, get to know them. I was really good at networking back in my early days of home inspections. I work well with people for the most part when it comes to business, but customer support, reviews, things like that It’s not my strong point. It is very much your strong point. You do really well at that. Thanks, i’m glad to have you on here. You’re still our most viewed picture on our Google My Business page.

David Nyman: 1:54
Yeah, everybody hears about it now on the podcast, so they have to go look at it.

Ian Robertson: 1:57
Yep, everybody, go look at it. David and a rowboat. Don’t know how that picture made it to our Google Business page, but there it is.

David Nyman: 2:03
Yeah, you know I appreciate the praise, but I think tell you this beforehand. but I do have a story that might explain part of it how I’m able to get along with people. I’d love to hear it. Yeah, so this was in my early days in the US, one of my first jobs. I worked with a man with a brain injury. He had hit his head really bad, could not remember things for anything And literally for the first I want to say two or three months he could not remember my name and his first name was David. So it was that serious And you know he had a good sense of humor. We got along really well. but the thing is he had a history of getting irritated because he had no patience with his own memory loss And because of that every time I came in there I had to work really hard and, you know, make him feel positive because, like, negative feelings really compounded And the more irritated he got, the more stuff he forgot And then again he got more irritated. So I managed. you know the supervisor said that usually people that worked with him lasted a month or two. but just by trying to, you know, get him in a positive mood every time I talk to him. I managed to come back for a few years actually.

Ian Robertson: 3:18
Well. So I mean, that’s a testament to your natural skill. It’s a skill that I think most of us lack, because it’s very hard to do with empathy, you know. It’s trying to put ourselves in the mind of the other person What are they thinking and feeling? And it’s draining for most of us. But you seem to have that natural knack for it and a skill that you’ve developed over time, so I don’t want to attribute it to just hey, this just happened. You put work into it, but it fits very well into our subject today, which is actually requested by one of our listeners. And you know, if you ever are listening to our podcast here and you want to know more about a subject, write in, because actually a lot of our podcasts are based on somebody sending us an email saying hey you know, can you talk about this? How do you handle this or that? By all means, send something in. So what’s our subject today? again, David.

David Nyman: 4:07
So it is how to get good reviews, how to respond to bad reviews and just how to be a great inspector and make sure people notice this.

Ian Robertson: 4:17
Yeah. So basically it’s all about reviews today. So I don’t want to alienate anybody in this podcast, because if you’re a new inspector, write this all down. But if you’re an experienced inspector and maybe you’ve gotten reviews, we’re going to have a few points that will help you hone your skills, because even those of us who get a lot of reviews, you know there’s some things that we could do to increase the number of reviews that we get and also the quality of the reviews that we get. So there’s going to be a little bit something in here for everybody. For the new guys, don’t try everything all at once. It can be a bit overwhelming. Cherry pick the ideas. You know Mike Ortiz he’s been on the show before. he says I cherry pick stuff out of your podcast. You can’t do it all. Just pick the things that work and then build off of that. Maybe come back in a couple of weeks or a couple of months and re-listen and pick out a few more things that you can apply.

David Nyman: 5:04
When it comes to reviews, too. I know that’s always been a problem with any business. I went to a social media marketing seminar a few years back and everyone in attendance like, even though it was aimed at social media, everyone is like but how do we get people to make reviews and how do we get them to you know, make reviews when they’re not just sad, but also when they’re, you know, happy or just satisfied.

Ian Robertson: 5:27
Yeah. So the two most common ratings that you’ll see across almost any platform is one star or five stars. The lesser amount of reviews are anything in between. Most people don’t leave reviews because it takes time out of their day. Most people will leave a review one star when they’re really upset or five stars when they’re extremely happy. You have to get emotional extremes to get to solicit a result, basically. So reviews, though, are the lifeblood of our industry. Go back and listen to our podcast on the customer journey. We talk about that because you know there’s no such thing as a cold lead anymore, like you used to get cold leads. Here’s the lead. Let’s convert it. You have what’s called a customer journey. They find you and then they look you up. They basically cyber stock our businesses to see. Do I want to work with these people? We’re not going to get into it all today, because we could do several podcasts on the customer journey, the psychology of it, all the little nuances and where they turn in that journey. It’s insane. They teach college courses on it because it’s a lot of psychology. We’re not going to get into that. Let’s talk about the main staple, the cornerstone of the customer journey, which is reviews. So let’s talk about this First of all, how to get reviews. So, before we can start getting reviews, we need to remember, we need to choose the right platform And just from your experience you know working with us for several years now David what are the main platforms that we should be thinking about using.

David Nyman: 6:54
For starters, of course, everybody knows this answer. Probably Google is going to be your number one spot just because, for the majority of people that have either an Android phone or they’re using Google Maps to search for things, going to be one of the first things they see, their review will be right there next to your business listing. So that’s a big one to make sure that you have set up, but also you have, facebook. A lot of people do their searches on Facebook. It’s probably a different generation than the Google searches, more or so. But yeah, those are the ones that the really will reflect more like, actually be visible to more clients than anything else.

Ian Robertson: 7:31
Yeah, so there’s. If you just go to a search engine type of thing, when people are going online looking you up, google and Facebook those are the big ones. While people talk about Facebook is dead, facebook actually represents like something stupid. Like 40% of the world’s population use Facebook. So we have to go look up the statistic again. We actually had the actual statistic on the podcast we did back with Inspector Media last year actually, but either way, a large chunk whatever that number is of the world uses Facebook, and Facebook is read into Google’s algorithm. So when somebody looks you up and looking for reviews, facebook is one of the primary data points that Google looks at. The nice thing is you don’t have a star rating, although they give it to you and the rendering of it It’s actually do you recommend or do you not? So there’s no middle ground. Like he did a great job, but you know, i think his shoelaces could have been tied tighter, so they leave you a three star review. Do not use Yelp. In my opinion, we have dozens of reviews in Yelp from verified Yelp users and verified reviews that Yelp will not show, and I’m not accusing them of anything. But when those reviews started to build up or they say, oh, we won’t show these because we can’t verify them. A sales rep called me and said we can help you expedite the review of these reviews that aren’t showing to see if we can get them shown for you if you were a paying user And I’m like, wow, okay, whatever he meant by that again not accusing Yelp of anything That didn’t sit right with me And every you know, one out of like 10 reviews will actually get shown on Yelp, whereas Google it’s nine out of 10. Google will reject some reviews if they don’t look legitimate. Facebook too. Facebook, you get a lot of spammy reviews. They’re so lenient with it. But either way, those are the best platforms in my opinion. Try to avoid niche platforms Like we might have something local or maybe our software offers a rating system. Those are not as heavily relied on And, as much as you may not like it, angie’s List and Home Advisor reviews are actually read really well into Google’s algorithm. So when people look you up, those are shown. I’m not suggesting using them, because as companies they’re not my favorite, but they do work in some markets. But if I would use them before Yelp, let’s put it that way. So when we’re getting reviews, we need to kind of automate it, like in our software Inspector Toolb elt. You know you can automate. Hey, here’s a link to our Google business page. Google give you a shortened link or you can use Bitly, so it’s bitlycom, is it David?

David Nyman: 10:04
Now bit.ly, bit.ly, thank you And actually a point on that if you’re using bit.ly, it’s free to use. We’re not affiliated with them anyway, so we don’t make any money from sending in there. but you just create an account, you paste your link in there and it shortens it to you know, very easy to remember link. but also they have a setting where you get a QR code with it That you can then add to your business card. People can just scan it for a quick link to your Google page, place Google site where they can, you know, review you.

Ian Robertson: 10:34
Yeah, and that’s important. It needs to be simple. So I see a lot of guys, even companies, that have sent me stuff. They send me this really long review link and all they did was copy and paste their link that they have from Google into an email or a text message. Half the time in a text message it doesn’t render And usually when I click on it it leads me to their admin dashboard instead of where I can leave a review. Be very careful. If you go to Google, go to your Google My Business page. If you don’t have one, start one. It’s free. You can actually just Google it. How do I start a Google My Business page? Go to the official site, start it and Google will have a little icon there. When you’re looking at your dashboard. It says get reviews. Click on that and it will give you a shortened link already, but you can go to bit.ly online and that will shorten it even more. The point is have a nice short link that people can just click on and automate it through email or text message. If we’re manually sending stuff or asking people to review us, it’s not gonna work. Somebody says, hey, can you review me online? To the modern person, i’m like you want me to go look you up online, try to figure out who you are, find the link, go wherever here and there, and then leave your review. It’s just not happening. We need to put it at their fingertips.

David Nyman: 11:52
Yeah, and we bit.ly you can also I almost forgot about this you can customize that link. So I think you have like 10 you can do each month, but all you need is one single link So you can put whatever you want after the bit.ly slash and then you can have like Ian’s Home Inspection Company.

Ian Robertson: 12:11
Yep, exactly, and so that’s for the new guys. For the experienced guys, something that I see you guys doing all the time is called review gating. Do you know what that is, david?

David Nyman: 12:21
I have no idea. I saw it on our notes for the podcast and I’m like I hope Ian explains that one because I’m not gonna do it.

Ian Robertson: 12:35
Yeah, so review gating is actually, Almost every platform says the same thing. So review gating is somebody says you send out a link and you say, hey, do you like us or not? And they click yes. Then you bring them where they can leave a review. They click no. Then you actually bring them somewhere else and you say, can you leave me a form or tell us why That’s called review gating. We put a gate in front of the review. If we’re software that does that, they can just shut the whole thing down. I don’t know exactly the consequences if we’re an individual user, but Google has officially said do not do this. So if we do not want to get our reviews shut down, hypothetically, do not be review gating. Does it save you from the occasional bad review? It can, but, as we’ll talk about in a minute, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Review gating, bad. If you’re doing that, stop. Now let’s hone our skills a little bit as to when the review goes out. So I will tell you I spent years and thousands of inspections finding the exact right time, day and way to get that review. So I tried and you’ll see lots of different things online. If you do a little bit of research And even some home inspectors say I always send it the day after, i’ll send it in an email the day after, or I send it to them in a text message before the inspection, so that way they have it, or whenever they send it. I know some guys that say I don’t send it until a week later, until they’ve had time to absorb the report. Here’s the best times that I’ve found. So, first of all, a week or even a day later is too late. We found Our reviews. Our review numbers went way down when you went outside the same day. People basically didn’t care about you at that point. They had the report, they knew what they were doing next and unless they really loved you or really hated you, you didn’t get a review or you got way less Like it was a considerable percentage less. My problem with that is we’ve all been on the inspection with the client that as soon as we’re 10 minutes in, we’re like this is not the person that want leaving me a review. This is not pretty. This is not going well. I saw just the other day some guy posted on one of the Facebook forums about a nightmare Client left the inspection, came back, complained that he didn’t actually see him, enters a certain portion of the house and you don’t want that guy leaving you a review. Let’s be honest, we’re not review gating, we’re just like let’s just hold back. What’s gonna happen here If they already have the link you can’t stop that from happening. Most of my clients have always been fantastic. 99.9%. It’s that 0.01%. That kind of stick in your head. I’ve had some try to blackmail me into doing stuff or you know what? I’ll leave you a bad review. It’s like all right and you can handle that, but it’s like they already have the link. It just kind of adds to that situation. So here’s my secret sauce One hour into the inspection, not an email, but as a text message and directly to the buyer. Not to the agents, but to the buyer. That, over thousands of inspections and over many years, ended up being by far the best. And here’s why, about an hour into the inspection, we usually get there half an hour early and so we’re an hour and a half into the inspection. By then They’ve seen us go into the nastiest of crawl spaces. They’ve seen us go over the exterior, give our driveway speech, meet us. We’ve answered most of the questions that they’ve had, if not all of them. But at that point And then at an hour into the inspection, almost invariably we’re either in the attic or our feet are dangling from the ceiling going in, it was just the perfect time. So when they’re standing there like this guy’s amazing boom Ding on their phone, here’s a quick link. Can you leave us a review, as one of my guys is hanging from the ceiling upside down?

David Nyman: 16:45
They’re like he’s crawling in my crawl space and texting me at the same time.

Ian Robertson: 16:50
But I tell you what it works. So they say hey, are you and and we always word it like this, something like are you enjoying the inspection?

David Nyman: 17:01
But not in a creepy tone.

Ian Robertson: 17:02
Yeah, not, yeah, not in the creepy Batman voice, but it was always the perfect time. Now, an hour in, we’d usually have a good sense of the situation and we could stop the stop the review link from going through, for, like, oh man, this guy’s just he is just angry at life. We could just quickly go on our phone and click so you can do this all within Inspector Tool belt, so you can schedule it so that it go. The text message goes out to the buyer At an at one hour into the inspection. Whatever software we use, that has always been my secret sauce. I’ll save you years and thousands of inspections One hour after the inspection starts. That’s the sweet spot. Our numbers have never been better. So there you go, went off a little bit on that. Sounds like good advice. Remember, though, most people aren’t gonna leave reviews, I don’t know what the percentage of people that actually leave reviews, David, do you?

David Nyman: 17:57
I have no idea. I mean I know it’s low. It does throw you off when you see, you know you’re going to Amazon. You see 5000 reviews for a potato peeler. You’re like did 5000 people really leave a review for this.

Ian Robertson: 18:12
Okay, so Let’s talk about that for a second, because you bring up a good point. So That’s not review gating, that is something completely different. Where it’s review harvesting, people always question those kind of reviews. I know I do. It’s like how come that you know, the most popular television on Amazon has 800 reviews, but this television that nobody’s ever heard of and that’s half the size and it’s from some country that I’ve never heard of, has, like you said, 5000 reviews. I started looking through the reviews and I’m like these are overly complementary. Mm-hmm, or this just doesn’t make sense. It’s review harvesting And we may do that without Realizing it. New, i see new guys do this all the time. I had one guy say, hey, can you remove this review for me from Google, my business, or at least not display it on my website, because it’s my brother, that’s the same last name as him, mm-hmm, and some of the other ones. I’m like, yeah, that sounds like it’s probably your cousin, your uncle, this one’s probably your buddy from high school. People like you and me, we’re gonna pick up on that. And most of our clients, people who buy homes, are people who have a measure of intelligence and Things together so that they can Financially afford the the grossly expensive buildings that we have now in society. They’re gonna have some stuff together, so expect them to notice.

Beon DeNood: 19:41
Mm-hmm.

Ian Robertson: 19:44
If you want reviews and you’re a new guy, do not go that route. There was actually a home inspector not far from me Where he got his Google business page shut down for quite some time and it’s because other home inspectors reported them, because they saw him review harvesting. His page got shut down, hurts business for quite some time and they got it put back up, but I know it’s not with not as many reviews. Google does not like review harvesting, yeah, and it’s gonna ruin trust.

David Nyman: 20:14
Yeah, it is crazy. I mean I did see a documentary on it to how you know the professional, professional companies do it, where they have basically a room full of phones and They just out. Yeah, really Yeah. You can probably find on YouTube What’s this documentary called, can’t remember, but it was specifically on the review harvesting business, because it is a huge business and it’s usually in you know, countries outside of The jurisdiction so they can’t really go after them, but they literally have phones just running and companies pay them to get. You know. Thousands of positive reviews are, you know, for the most part, you can read through them and they sound, you know, normal, but you will find that a lot of the reviews are very like. If you scroll through Amazon, you have five thousand reviews for a potato peeling. Like I said, you can see like this is a very good peeler. I like peeling potatoes with it. It’s Probably AI generated and, but they assume that people are just gonna be like. This is the highest rated peeler on Amazon. Must be great.

Ian Robertson: 21:17
Yeah, and Google has a little bit more of a tougher Policy on that than Amazon does. Really matter of fact, we’re not gonna get into this, but Google is suing a company for fake reviews. So if you’re listening, look that up. It’s actually an interesting read. I’ve been following the case, don’t want to get too much into it, but Google is suing them for a lot of different reasons. So don’t do that. So some guys ask me what can I do instead? If I’ve never done an inspection, i can’t have a review. If I don’t have any reviews, no one will hire me. So there’s a couple things you can do. You want to be a hundred percent Honest and learn. Do you want to go out there and do your first inspection with a hundred fake reviews? It’s just. First of all, it’s kind of icky, you know, and second of all, it people are gonna figure that out there like how do you have a 150 reviews already and you’ve been an inspector for two months, you know, whatever. Well, we’ve already talked about that. Starting off, try to do things legitimately, can you? and I’m not. Some guys are gonna email me after this and be like you’re telling people to work for free. So this is not what I’m saying, but think about it this way Do you have a contractor friend? Say, hey, do you mind if I come and inspect that foundation for you before you guys start working on it? Sure, have him really critique you and, if you did a good job, ask him for a review. Can you leave me a review? Actually do your job. I’m not talking about go and say, hey, can you leave me a review. Go and physically do your job. Do you have Somebody that you’re practicing on, like you’re gonna inspect their house, provide them a report, say, critique me on this, what do you think I could have done better? What did you think I did good, did well. Rather then ask them for a review. You want legitimate reviews. Try not to get family, as it’s just gonna look weird and they’re gonna be over complimentary. Find some contractor friends, even Even like an agent, so say you offer a rad on as an ancillary inspection. Can you find an agent? say, hey, i’ll do this radon inspection that read on test at cost. You know it cost me $58 for the kit and mailing. Can I, can I just do this on your house? Oh, sure. So double whammy, you didn’t lose any money. They’ll leave you a good review for , not necessarily for home inspections, but still adds your rate on To your, your ratings in general, and now you’ve met an agent who might use you for a home inspection later on.

David Nyman: 23:50
Yeah, and you say I mean you say that people are gonna be upset because you’re saying to work for free, but when you think about it, if you’re willing to pay for marketing, this basically what you’re doing now.

Ian Robertson: 24:00
Yeah, it’s unpaid marketing. You’re just, you’re just doing it. It’s really important that you legitimately do something going and asking people for reviews, not without actually doing anything. It’s not going to be real. I can smell a fake review from a mile away, half the time At least. I would like to think so, and a lot of people can. Like you you just talked about. So, if we’re new, get legitimate reviews. There’s a home inspector I know that did that. He went to an engineer friend. Can I, can I look at this and you critique me if I did a good job? Leave me a review if you don’t mind. Yeah, and he got a lot of good reviews for the legitimately doing things that are part of what we do as a home inspector.

David Nyman: 24:40
Yeah, and a lot of times too, you don’t think about that when you try to get these fake reviews. But you know, google tracks how many reviews you left in the past. So if this is the first review a person leaves, that’s a dead giveaway. That’s, you know, someone doing your favor. If they only had an account for a few days, someone created an account just to you know, give you an extra review. So, yeah, avoid all those things.

Ian Robertson: 25:03
Yeah, i actually click on reviews and see who left them, and if I get through five or six and they’ve only left one review for this one company, then I I just kind of move on. I don’t use companies that look like that fake reviews. But think about this before. So that’s the first point. But let’s think about this. Have realistic expectations. One of my favorite restaurants, about 15 minutes for me, serves hundreds of people on any given Friday night. They’ll do three rotations of of guests and Then that doesn’t even count Saturday and Sunday. So Hundreds, if not a thousand or more people every weekend. They have like a hundred and eighty reviews and They’ve been open for years. So just remember that we’re not going to get everyone to leave a review, even if they’re super excited. Some people just don’t like to do it. I’m a heavy reviewer. I don’t know about you, David, do you review a lot?

David Nyman: 25:56
I’d like to brag a little bit about myself. I’m a star reviewer on Google, they told me, so I’m among the top, so among the percent of reviewers. Wait, wait, wait. okay, what level are you?

Ian Robertson: 26:07
I can look it up. I’m a level eight. Oh wait, am I a level? I’m a level seven or a level eight? I just went up. I can’t remember which one I went up to, but they said I’m in the top five percent of reviewers in the nation. How about you?

David Nyman: 26:20
about you?

Ian Robertson: 26:30
I view it as like a little bit of a game that I play. I love to leave reviews. My policy, though, is I only leave good reviews, because I find that bad reviews are not constructive. If I have a bad experience, i’ll actually go and email that company, say I’m not gonna leave a bad review. Here’s my experience. Most of them are appreciative of it. If I have a. So the worst thing you can do to a restaurant is that old expression is just never go again. So that’s just what I do. I just never go again for anything that I review. But Google keeps sending me these things. Now, like it asks me to review things like the other, like I don’t know. About a month ago, it asked me to review a bathroom. Like I walk out of this public restroom and said I said, will you review this bathroom? And I’m looking at my phone and first I thought it was a joke and not to be crude, but I I left a review. I said it was great, would poop here again. Didn’t know what to do. I’m like how is Google asking me, you know, to review bathrooms now, but you can review anything now, apparently, yeah, but so there it is to get reviews. Number one automate it. Have software like ours that you can automate emails and text messages. The sweet spot again. I’ve tested this out over years and thousands of inspections painstakingly One hour after the start time of the inspection, so for us it would be an hour and a half after we’ve already started. That’s the best spot for us. Do not review gate, do not review harvest and Keep things real and genuine, because that’s really what makes a real, genuine content on the internet is hard to find. When people find It, they’re drawn to it. Real, genuine reviews people are actually drawn to that. It’s nothing that you can really mimic. So what’s the next subject that we’re gonna talk about, David? Now we’re gonna talk about the bad side of reviews What really can hurt you, how to respond to them and such Yeah, we’ve written blog posts on this, we’ve talked about it before and I still see some of the worst responses to bad reviews. I Have a policy when we, if we get a review that even sounds bad, which we haven’t gotten a lot, i’m trying to think back. I think my company’s probably only have maybe three One was a three-star review and two one-star reviews or something like that not a lot. Every time it’s happened I’ve always felt my emotions go up, i start to shake, my blood pressure goes up. So the first thing I do is I do not touch it for a whole day. I just I can’t, can’t do it. Yeah, not gonna make a good decision. So If we get a bad review Or we perceive it as a bad review So I’ve seen guys get a three-star review Really fantastic inspector showed up on time and they leave three stars or they give him one tiny little critique He didn’t put his shoe booties on, okay. So three stars is not a bad review. I don’t look at three stars as a bad review for any company, some people, they’ll never leave a perfect review. So before we freak out, look at it. So, first of all, three star review. All right, wait your 24 hours. Did we maybe forget to put our shoe covers on the little shoe booties? Okay, maybe we should start doing that more. That actually is constructive. Could they could have left a one-star review? Maybe they said something else. We’re like you know what, maybe I could adjust that a little bit. Or maybe they didn’t say anything else and they still gave us three stars. Okay, that’s not a bad review. One star now that’s a bad review. I’ve never actually seen. Has anybody actually ever seen somebody leave two stars? Why, what’s the point of having two stars?

David Nyman: 30:20
I know it was bad, but not the worst. Yeah, exactly.

Ian Robertson: 30:23
What do you, what do you say in that You’re not committing? I don’t think.

David Nyman: 30:27
I can’t remember ever leaving one myself.

Ian Robertson: 30:30
Yeah a lot of times. Oh, i’m sure, i’m sure I’m being facetious, i’m sure there’s my two-star reviews out there.

David Nyman: 30:35
I just like yeah, we don’t. We don’t want to make them feel bad for leaving two stars. It’s nothing wrong with you.

Ian Robertson: 30:39
I don’t understand two stars.

David Nyman: 30:41
Yeah, for myself, i’m like your average person. It’s a one-star or a five-star. I usually hesitate even leaving a four-star review, which is a good review, just because if there’s a business and they have a 4.5 star rating, i know if I leave a four-star review, i’m actually not helping them at all. I’m actually lowering that rating.

Ian Robertson: 31:01
Yeah, and at four stars you want to. That’s what I’m saying. It’s a four stars. Might as well leave them a five-star, you know. Because, if they were that good, it was really that bad to leave them one less star and bring down their rating.

David Nyman: 31:12
Yeah, maybe you should switch from reviews stars to the list thumbs up or down like well, that’s what Facebook does.

Ian Robertson: 31:17
Facebook actually doesn’t have stars. It renders properly, but you either recommend it renders with five stars, but either recommend or you don’t. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Yeah but No, they know what they’re doing. I think Google should learn from them. Here’s my process. So first of all, if it’s a client I know and they aren’t really angry and I read the review and it’s like, oh, they must not have read the report, i try to contact them very calmly. Hey, you know, i saw your review. I can appreciate your opinion. Did you look on page 34? Geez, i’m sorry, ian. This whole process has been stressful. Yada, yada, yada, and then the review is gone. I had one where they were upset because there was no insulation in their porch. So I Contacted them like it’s a porch, and they’re like, oh, good point, and then they revise their review. I’m like that was a weird one. But okay, try Kindly contacting them. I say kindly because our first inclination is attack, Fix, we’re not gonna fix, we’re not gonna attack, we’re gonna just talk with them, make them feel heard, and some people are not gonna react that way. Some people are gonna be like you’re a jerk and I’m leaving you a one-star, okay, well, thank you very much for your time.

David Nyman: 32:35
Yeah, actually it’s funny. If you ever seen on those late night shows where they do reading of bad reviews, i think it’s on yelp. They do those. They actually have. Some actors are visiting reading through their views, back and forth between the owner and the reviewer, and they can really show you. You know, even though it’s hilarious to listen to them read through it, it’s a terrible, terrible marketing for the, for the restaurant or whatever it is they reviewing. Because you know You never, you never accomplish anything by Responding angrily to a bad review. Yep.

Ian Robertson: 33:06
And even if we aren’t angry in our response, i do this and you’ve actually told me like sometimes I’ve sent something to somebody and I’ve copied you on it and you’re like Your tone didn’t sound good. I’m like, really I feel like I should have put a smiley, i felt like I was doing awesome, but my tone was wrong. People are gonna read their own emotions into it. So if we leave a response we thought we did amazing and the person just gets angrier And they can revise their review to make it even angrier and angrier. So have somebody look over your response. General rule wait 24 hours. Have somebody objective not our wife or husband or you know a brother who’s just as angry as us somebody objective How do you think this looks? You know, if you’re one of our clients, shoot me an email. Clients do this all the time, Ian, how do you think this response looks? and I’ve actually gone and said you know, maybe you could put a little bit differently here or thank them, or also Put your main kind rebuttal in the first half of the first sentence, because most people don’t read the responses all the way through from the owners, but the response from the owner is extremely important. How you respond can actually win you work, but so maybe they didn’t read the report. You can say thank you, comma. I Notice on page 34 of your report that we’ve put this in here. If there is something that we could have done to draw more attention to that part of your report, please let us know. We’re glad that we found this for you, but we want to make sure that our clients thoroughly read the reports. So you put your rebuttal in the first half of the first sentence on page 34. So anybody that reads your response, the first thing they see is these guys didn’t read their report. You know, but in a very kind way I had a We’re gonna go off on a tangent here just real quick but I had a People that left me a bad review one time and I called out a roof, two layers of shingles, and the shingles are just trash. There was nothing left to them. They had removed framing members from the floor, this old 1700s house, and So I called for a structural contractor and my foot almost went through the floor. A structural contractor, to You know, put in the floor joist, you needed those. You could see where they were removed. I’m hey, i’m no genius, but floor, joist, i think you need those good things. Yeah and so, and then the roof. So the buyers came back and they said the sellers hired contractors And they said the home inspector was wrong. And I’m like, okay, so I Kindly responded. Thank you. If you notice, on page 34, the shingles were deteriorated. If you notice on page this, and And and then. I ended it very short and brief. I really appreciate your opinions. I really want to make sure that all of our clients are happy. I Would have I would imagine that you probably would have been more unhappy if we didn’t report on these issues And you had moved in and found out about them. Hopefully you get your own contractors to look at these things to make sure that your home is safe for you and your family. I Got more work for years after from that review than any of my good reviews. It was awesome. People kept coming back to me and would specifically mention that, without me asking, we hired you because of your response. That was perfect. We could tell you know your stuff and that you would treat us right.

David Nyman: 36:26
So yeah, No, i’ve done that myself too. Like I read the reviews, i’m like, oh, i wonder what this one star reviews for. And you see the the response to it. You’re like, yeah, that makes sense. This guy is being a jerk, just I’m gonna.

Ian Robertson: 36:41
Yeah, so that is true and I and I look at that too when I go someplace You know to eat or shop or do whatever, and I see the owners responses. Sometimes I’m like I gotta meet this guy. Like the owners responses are just like so spot-on, like one guy complained about the or no, it was some lady complained about the bugs at like us, at this, like a plant nursery.

David Nyman: 37:04
Ian Robertson: 37:06
I mean there’s plants, Yeah there’s gonna be bugs. So there’s gonna be bugs.

David Nyman: 37:12
Hope you’re not playing on gardening. Yeah exactly.

Ian Robertson: 37:14
But you know, the owner’s response was just like polite but like just spot-on. So How we respond is important. So I always like to see, if I can talk to the client, that they’re just angry. You know That that’s gonna be what they’re gonna be. How we respond to the view is important. Review is important. Don’t divulge too many details because we don’t want to go on the Course of you know, hey, here’s the address, here’s your name, here’s all this stuff. Hey, stephen. Yeah you know, just you know. There it is, and sometimes people leave bad reviews even competitors, from somebody else’s name. You get a bad review and you have no idea who this person is, and sometimes it’s an agent. I’ve had agents leave bad reviews. Whatever it is, just kindly say hi, i think you might have the wrong company. We have no record of ever working with you. If you, if you’d like to schedule an inspection, we’re happy to take a look at any of the issues the other inspector missed for you. Here’s our number. You know you can’t help those and bad reviews can add legitimacy to your business. On average, a person will trust a company with 4.5 to 4.9 star reviews Then they will s omebody has a perfect five-star, ironically, because it makes it you look more legitimate. I’ve always thought that was a weird thing, that it was more legitimate If you had one bad review or a couple bad reviews mixed in with all the good ones now.

David Nyman: 38:34
No, it makes sense to me. Just think about you know, go out on the street and meet 10 people. You’re probably gonna meet one jerk. So if you have, if you have a hundred reviews, everybody left you five stars. It’s not real people.

Ian Robertson: 38:48
Wait a second, i’ve it how many people are in our company. Okay all right, good, so we’re only one person away. Maybe I don’t know what to go back and count. So the last last thing on this point, though, is At times you can have the review removed. So I’ve actually removed bad reviews for others when I’ve seen the review being bad. So, as funny as it is being a level seven or level eight Google reviewer, you actually get this weird magical power online. I’m only five. I just checked Yeah you see you’re only five. You you need to escalate your reviewing. So if you haven’t someone that Google trusts as a what they call a local guide or local expert whatever they’re Happen to be calling it at the time and they mark a review as being bad, google actually escalates that and say okay, is this review actually bad? Is it legitimate? Should it be removed? I’ve removed fake, fake, good reviews. I just click on, i said this looks like a fake review and I’ve Clicked on bad reviews. I’m like this looks like spam or a competitor and it has to be legitimate. Like you can’t just wave your wand and all the stuff gets removed. I’ve had clients when they’re like Hey, you know this person left me a bad review, i won’t, i won’t go in there and click it as spam if it was actually their client. But now I’ve seen somewhere. I’m like this is very obviously spam. This is not, this is not cool what this other person is doing. And I’ll click on it And I’ll say remove review. Like 80% of the time they’ll remove it not all the time, but the more people that you get to do it, the more likely you’ll be removed. The higher the level of the person Removing the review, the higher the chance. So that does happen. Don’t let people tell you that it doesn’t happen. I do it all the time When I’m in my own local area. I do it all the time. The next thing is you can hire an attorney if you get a bad review for what’s called a libel suit. So I actually did this once with an attorney. I had a seller get mad because they actually had a great house, almost no defects. I wrote down that they had this old style bay window on the back of the house and I didn’t market as a defect, i just made a notation to report. Watch these, they have a tendency to leak. Make sure you seal them and regularly take care of them. And then in their garage the pest guy was there And I was doing a pest inspection too. I don’t know why the buyers hired two pest inspectors. The guy pulled back some boards and there was carpenter ants everywhere, like, oh, so I take a picture and I say, okay, carpenter ants. It’s like two, three hundred dollar treatment at the time. Seller flipped out, left bad reviews everywhere, multiple ones. It was insane like people were messaging me. They’re like well, there’s bad reviews everywhere. It was this one person. So I tried to reason with her but finally came down to InterNACHI’s attorney at the time, mark Cohen, i believe his name was, i forget. Really nice guy. Said, hey, can you help me out? Said sure. So he looked it up. He’s like, oh, this lady meets all the criteria. So for a libel suit, as he explained, they need to have mal intent Being one of the criteria. They are working hard to do harm to your company. Number two They need to falsify information And I forget what the third one is offhand, but basically They have to like have something accusatory. He used some legal mumbo jumbo but basically she met all the criteria. She won accused me of falsifying my reports, which is a big, big deal. Number two She said in the review I hope this review prevents anyone else from ever using this guy. She was mad, claiming that none of the stuff was there. The people bought the house. They weren’t even negotiating. She was just mad at the report. I still don’t understand this, but He wrote a letter and he quoted case law. There’s a case law in Pennsylvania and some other states which set precedents. So a libel suit for a bad review with falsified information and with mal intent has no limit to damages. So if I damage your house, how much does it cost to fix? Those are your, those are your damages and that’s what you consume me for with a libel suit. In this case There was no, there was no limitation to damages. Turns out this lady was a journalist and she Kind of knew about it. So when the attorney sent the letter, she kind of wrote an angry letter back, but she took all the reviews out down because she knew this guy has me over a barrel Because when we recorded every one of her reviews, every rendition of it, because she kept changing them, and so then I just basically Well, the attorney sent her, here’s all the reviews, boom, every rendition of them, and And all of your intent. So take screenshots, take your records. But to go that far as a big deal, there was a kind of the big case law. That happened was a contractor sued a guy for leaving a bad review and This is actually what created the federal case law for all of this. You can look it up because the attorney the attorney at the time actually included it in his letter. It ended up being a stalemate because the contractor did things to get back at the Set that the owner of the home. So the judge said of course he did. Of course he did instead of waiting. He could have had hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, but instead he went and got revenge. But the attorney said, basically the damages now are equal to each other, which I thought was an interesting outcome. But The result of that case was there were damages, so if you can show that they didn’t, you can’t stop people from expressing their opinion. They say I didn’t like his report and I I think he missed some things that I would have rather he picked out. That’s not a libel suit, unfortunately. That’s just their opinion. You can’t sue people for having an opinion about you. So you just move on. So you just you just move on with those. Follow the other steps. If you have a real libel suit, you know, contact an attorney, see what he says, but they’re really hard cases. You spend years doing them. Most of the time it just gets taken down with the letter. But I remember that one particular case we had an attorney handle it, but we kind of hung on that point for quite a bit. This is such a big subject, but let’s just talk real briefly how we can make our reviews work for us though. So that’s the third point. What can we do? So now we have all these good reviews. I know lots of guys have good reviews and then they’re just like now, what do I do? Wait till people find them? What are some things you can do, David?

David Nyman: 45:04
Yeah, no, that’s definitely use good reviews in your marketing. So if you ever use Canva very easy program to create your own social media posts in, You can take the text from that review, just copy and paste it into Canva and get some cool fonts, cool background, Like thank you, so much so and so for your nice review, And then you can have that on your website as part of the marketing. A lot of websites will have a spinner with reviews pull directly from Google. So if you have that set up on your website already, hopefully that review will populate And even your social media. Put it on Facebook, Twitter, whatever you’re using TikTok, if you’re modern and young, just make sure that people see it.

Ian Robertson: 45:51
Yeah. So a couple other things just to add to David’s information there. Social media is going to be extremely important. You get a review. Blast that out everywhere. Now, if you’re a bigger company and you’re getting three a day, okay, tone it down and maybe only highlight the really good ones. Even just keep it down to remember the 80, 20 rule 80% of the time it’s about the client, 20% about you. So don’t stop posting good, awesome content to just blast everybody with the reviews, because they’re going to tire to see that. A couple times a week, maybe. Respond to every single review. So when was the last time you went through your Google business profile or Facebook page and responded to every review and not just thank you exclamation point, write something meaningful, Thank you. We really appreciated working with you. Hope you and your family enjoy the new home. Add something meaningful and different to each one. If you can’t do that, stop, take a break and come back the next day until you can.

David Nyman: 46:45
And this goes well too, when you have several inspectors in your company. Actually check with those inspectors, like do you have anything to say about the client that we could add to the response?

Ian Robertson: 46:56
Yeah, exactly, and for the social media thing, i’ve been watching a couple of inspectors online and I love it. They actually have either them or somebody in their company read some of the reviews, and it’s so. If you want to keep it professional, cool, hire somebody on Fiverr or somebody do a good voiceover, read the review. I don’t think people pay attention to that as much. There’s a couple of inspectors that like they’ll have like this really crazy backdrop and they’ll, like they’ll be up on a roof I want to read this really loudly And they’ll read the review with the wind blowing And it’s just, it’s entertaining to watch. It draws attention to this five star review. You know, we don’t have to be goofy about it if we’re not goofy, but you know, but you can.

David Nyman: 47:41
But you can, let’s be honest.

Ian Robertson: 47:42
And people like that, especially on TikTok, that’s going to grab more attention. Like you’re in a crawl space, you have your mask on, have subtitles under it And all you can hear is the inspector. Go and have subtitles. I’d like to read you our latest five star review. And then you know, after you read the review, you just kind of crawl off into the dark in the crawl space. Oh man, i love that stuff. I look for them Like I can’t wait till they get another review because I want to see what they’re going to do next. Like you open the door to the closet and they pop their head out of the attic access and they’re like here’s our latest five star review. So if you really want a cool idea, if you take anything away from this podcast hopefully you’ll listen that long because we’re a little bit longer than we usually are in our podcast try that out. Read your reviews in funny, interesting ways and have some fun with it, and people really notice it. But my big takeaway is David, one hour into the inspection. That’s the key for automating your reviews. Responding to a bad review, if anything. Just wait till the next day, be calm, kind, courteous, but the first thing wait till the next day. Never respond the same day. Get our emotions calm. And third, heck man, read the reviews in fun ways that people will enjoy and put it on TikTok. Anything else to add, David?

David Nyman: 48:57
Perfect. Yeah, i want to go back to one point. I want to hear an episode on how many home inspectors actually use those booties when they go in for inspections and different brands and reviews. Yeah.

Ian Robertson: 49:09
What’s going to be the title of our episode about booties?

David Nyman: 49:15
Your home inspector’s booty.

Ian Robertson: 49:21
Well, i knew we were going to digress at some point. It happens. Might as well be the end of the episode, david. Awesome having you on. Thank you so much. Thank you, talk to you later. Bye.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.