Little to No Hesitance When Asking for Customer Reviews, PCOs Report

CLEVELAND — Online customer reviews provide insights into a company and its practices. With face-to-face interactions between PCOs and customers happening frequently when in the field the majority of PCOs said they are comfortable asking a customer to leave an online review.

According to a recent PCT reader poll, 52% of respondents said nothing stops them from asking customers for online reviews, they ask consistently, while 29% said not wanting to annoy customers is what stops their company from asking for online reviews more often. Fourteen percent said they either forget to ask for online customer reviews or they don’t have a system for the reviews. Lastly, 5% said concerns of negative feedback stop them from asking for an online review.

Krista Imondi, director of customer experience, Debug Pest Control, Smithfield R.I., said Debug encourages its technicians to ask for reviews.

“We work with Applause,” she said. “So, [technicians] do get review bonuses for when they get reviews.”

Imondi said most Debug technicians put the request in the follow-up notes on their service report often with, “If you love our service, leave us a Google review.”

Quest Termite & Pest Management, Hellertown, Pa. encourages and incentivizes its technicians to request a review, said Kendra Snyder, general manager for the company. Quest has a couple of different ways it goes about requesting reviews. Snyder said it starts with the company’s inside sales team having conversations with customers where they discuss how the service went. Following the conversation an email confirming the conversation is sent that also contains a link to leave a review

Snyder said Quest also has QR codes on multiple documents so if a technician is in front of a client they have something to point towards to leave a review. Technicians at Quest are also incentivized to request reviews and receive monetary incentives during the end of month meeting.

“It’s just saying 'Thank you for asking, here’s what they’re saying about you,'” Snyder said. “The guys out in the field like to hear how good they’re doing and get that feedback. Because they feel like they’re on an island sometimes it’s positive for them too.”

She said Quest is looking at possible ways to incentivize its clients to leave review or give referrals, Snyder said.

“We're working on different campaigns and ways to boost our reviews because we never asked for them before,” Snyder said. “Now we're at the point in the season of our business where we're like, okay, we really need to start working on this. So, we're putting an effort to make sure people know that that's important to us.”

Andrew Taylor, owner, Grace Valley Pest Control, Dahlonega, Ga. said his company utilizes Gorilla Desk software for its reviews.

“It's very rare that I'll ask for a review, but when we send our invoices after service it's passively there where it says, ‘how was your service today?’”

Taylor said Grace Valley has been open since 2022, and it implemented the system pretty quickly. Since then, Taylor said the company has around 172 five-star reviews.

“I think that's more just organic,” he said. “If we do a good job, we want to hear about it, but we are not asking for a review every time.”