Electrician Reputation Management: The Complete Guide [2024]

What is Electrician Reputation Management?

Electrician reputation management refers to actively monitoring customers’ online and offline perceptions of your business and influencing them by responding to customer feedback and addressing concerns promptly.

Reputation management is a cross-departmental function that cuts across sales, marketing, and customer support and involves all employees. 

That’s because customers perceive every interaction with an employee as an interaction with the company itself. Whatever perception they leave with after such interactions extends to the entire organization.

What does reputation management include?

Electrical company reputation management encompasses four key complementary elements:

• Monitoring review sources include listing directories like Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) and Angi, as well as social media platforms and other communication channels.

• Addressing customer reviews.

• Soliciting customer feedback through surveys, via email, post-job completion calls, or online forms.

• Discovering and using data insights to restructure and improve your customer service apparatus.

Considering the hassle involved in cultivating a positive reputation, what are the benefits? Why spend so much time and resources on reputation management?

Why is Reputation Management Important for Electrical Businesses?

With 98 percent of consumers conducting online research on local service businesses before using electrical services, it should be no shock to electrical business owners that a stellar online reputation is critical in this digital age.

Recent consumer surveys show that 90 percent of buyers are more likely to convert after reading reviews, while 85 percent of buyers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

It’s safe to assume every customer checks online reviews before spending on costly jobs like panel installation or rewiring their whole house. You risk losing business if you rate below local competitors or don’t appear prominently in online search results.

Also, just one negative review can tilt a customer about to hire your electrical company toward local competitors.

“Review management is a huge part of our marketing here because it’s more than just a pat on the back from your customers,” says Brittany Brewer, marketing and customer service manager at Bradbury Brothers Cooling, Plumbing & Electrical in Magnolia, Texas. 

“It’s giving potential customers feedback from the people they associate with when looking for a company to use. It’s super, super important.”

To summarize, reputation management can help electrician businesses achieve the following:

• Improve their local search ranking: Search engines like Google use the number and quality of online reviews to determine local search rankings and pick businesses to appear in prominent search features like the local map pack.

• Differentiate from local competitors: A positive reputation proves an electrical company is reliable and different from competitors, which generates sales.

• Grow brand awareness: Maintaining a good reputation causes people to talk about your brand positively, attracting more customers and encouraging organic word-of-mouth referrals.

• Gain valuable customer insights: Reputation management helps companies understand what customers like and dislike and use these insights to improve service quality.

• Grow revenue: Positive reviews and a high service rating encourage potential clients to hire you and generate repeat business, boosting revenue and growing your business.

• Grow trust and credibility: Potential customers are more likely to trust you when they see multiple positive reviews. It proves you’re credible and capable of resolving their electrical problems.

Managing a top-rated online presence requires today’s electrical shops to actively monitor online reviews, respond rapidly to positive and negative customer feedback, and leverage multiple review sites to earn new customers and referrals.

Electrical shops increasingly rely on reputation management software, such as ServiceTitan Marketing Pro’s Reputation Management feature, to automate review collection, streamline workflows, and boost the number of online reviews.

Electrician Reputation Management Best Practices

Here’s a breakdown of top electrician reputation management best practices.

Let’s explore them further.

1. Generate reviews

The first step in online reputation management is to generate new reviews continuously. This is crucial since people traditionally trust the opinions of a company’s former customers more than the company’s advertising when gauging that company’s service quality.

Also, customers consider the recency of reviews when picking a business.

Generating reviews has to be a conscious and ongoing process. For example, Howard Bromberg, general manager at Vines Restoration, Plumbing, and HVAC, encourages CSRs to assist satisfied customers in leaving reviews.

“We have a lot of older customers (in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina). We'll even have them call our office and say, ‘I want to leave a Google review for so-and-so, but I don't know how to do it.’ And we'll have one of our CSRs work them through the process so they can leave a review.” 

You can also simplify the process by using ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management system to send automated review requests by text message or email immediately after the tech marks the job complete on a mobile device.

“One of the biggest value propositions of Reputation Management is the ability to ask for reviews from your customers at the right time, right when things are fresh in their mind, and add a little more automation to it,” says ServiceTitan Strategic Project Manager Heather Donaldson.

Besides sending the review to the customer right away, Reputation’s automation also provides a solution for employees who don’t feel comfortable asking the customer to give feedback. 

“Reputation is kind of a numbers game,” Donaldson says. “The more people you ask for reviews, the more likely you'll get a high number of reviews back.”

Russell Furr, owner of Culpeper Home Services, knows the review numbers game well and credits online reviews and search engine optimization (SEO) value with helping launch his multimillion-dollar business.

“I was just a little one-man operation working out of my basement, but the customer’s perception was that I was a larger company,” Furr says. “Within the first month [...] I’m at the top [of Google rankings]. The reviews give customers confidence that you will take care of them.”

2. Engage with your customers

Engaging with customers is a key part of reputation management. It builds an emotional connection with them and allows you to dispel false information and resolve customer complaints.

This encourages prospective customers to use your business instead of competitors.

According to Sprout Social, 38 percent of customers easily recall brands that respond to social media comments. Also, 88 percent of participants in a BrightLocal survey say they are likely to use a business that responds to all reviews, whether positive or negative.

Beyond engaging with customers, the timeliness of your response is equally important. 34 percent of customers expect businesses to respond to their reviews within 48 to 72 hours of posting.

You can use a reputation management platform like ServiceTitan to shorten review response times.

ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management sends a notification to its dashboard whenever customers submit new reviews. You can even flag reviews by star rating, so a negative review automatically goes to your customer support rep or CEO.

At Bradbury Brothers, Brittany Brewer manages customer reviews across Google, Facebook, Yelp, and other review sites using ServiceTitan's Reputation Management solution. She likes saving time and managing reviews in a single window. 

"If one comes in, I can attack it right then and there," Brewer says. For positive reviews, "I just answer those every morning. It's a really good way to start your day."

Reputation Management also lets you build response templates, so you don’t need to type an original response to every review. However, you can craft a unique response, as some shops believe a personal touch improves customer relationship management (CRM).

3. Provide accurate information

Maintaining consistent and accurate information across your business listings and website allows customers to contact you easily, ensuring positive customer satisfaction.

Search engines also rely on information (especially your name, address, and phone, aka NAP) on your business listings and websites to determine if you’re relevant to local-intent queries such as “electrical company near me.” If your information is inconsistent, you’ll shorten your odds of ranking high and appearing in local search results.

Marketing Pro-Reputation Management simplifies business management and lets you simultaneously update business listing information across 60+ sites, ensuring consistency and reducing hassle.

“You’re cutting out that middleman and those extra steps,” Heather Donaldson explains. “You're able to do it all from ServiceTitan, to cut down on clicks and get a little more efficient with your time.”

If you move or add a new location, change hours, or fix inaccurate listings, Reputation Management makes it easy to create one source of truth for your customer information.

“That’s, of course important for search engine placement (local SEO),” Donaldson says. “And also just making sure your customers have a better sense of trust if they’re looking for you. They can see your name, phone number, and address are correct in all the spaces they may see you. They’re going to trust that data a little more.”

4. Monitor your business’s online reputation

Tracking what people say about you is a key pillar of reputation management. It involves finding and monitoring the social media platforms, review sites, and forums customers use to discuss your business.

You can use specialized listening tools such as Sprout Social and Hootsuite to streamline monitoring your online reputation.

However, we advise you to use a Reputation Management tool such as ServiceTitan to drill down into each review to access useful data insights.

Marketing Pro – Reputation Management provides deep insights showing which customers, jobs, and technicians drive the most positive or negative reviews. 

This way, you can quickly spotlight techs with a concerning pattern of negative reviews and determine the job types that bring in the most reviews, among other actionable metrics. It also eliminates the need to track technician reviews on a manual spreadsheet.

ServiceTitan’s review data opens up additional opportunities to drive performance higher, like rewarding technicians based on reviews.

5. Respond to negative feedback

Responding to negative feedback can turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal one, demonstrating you’re authentic and interested in making things right.

Ignoring negative feedback and responding only to positive reviews can also portray your brand as dishonest.

Furthermore, customers use a company’s response rate to negative feedback to gauge service quality—88 percent of customers say they prefer using a business that responds to both positive and negative reviews.

However, to fully enjoy the benefits of responding to negative feedback, avoid using boilerplate responses. These generic replies are impersonal and dismissive, further aggravating the customer’s frustration at being undervalued and let down.

The best approach is to create a template that outlines key points you want to address (e.g., apology, clarification, resolution steps) and personalize it to each feedback. This streamlines the response process while demonstrating transparency and value for the customer’s opinion.

Brittany Brewer, of Bradbury Brothers, shares the tips for responding to negative feedback that she used to convince a customer to change a one-star to a four-star rating:

• Set up a temporary automated response to notify the customer that the company is working to resolve the issue.

• Defend your company from false reviews. Start your response with “Thank you for your feedback” and explain what actually happened.

• Take the conversation to an offline or private channel so competitors don’t use the opportunity to steal customers.

6. Make it easy for customers to contact you

Direct communication channels allow dissatisfied customers to contact you directly and voice their concerns. 

This allows you to rectify issues promptly and turn negative experiences into positive ones, potentially improving customers’ perceptions of your business. It also prevents customers from venting their frustrations publicly online.

One way to offer customers multiple direct contact channels is to use ServiceTitan's Customer Experience software.

Its integrated SMS feature facilitates direct communication between the customer and your employees. Customers can ask questions, give feedback, and reschedule jobs, while employees can send appointment reminders.

Such a direct communication channel humanizes the brand and minimizes negative public complaints that can hurt it.

ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience software also has a Web Scheduler or Chat-to-Text website plugin, which customers can use to book jobs directly from your sites. Those jobs automatically show up on your dispatch board.

This convenient booking process allows customers to easily book appointments, contributing to a positive customer experience.

7. Leverage customer testimonials

Customer testimonials involve customers speaking about their experience with your business in their own words. These stories are more believable, as readers feel they are authentic.

Furthermore, customer testimonials written in conversational language are more likely to stir an emotional reaction in electrical prospects, which can lead to sales.

Therefore, place customer testimonials on your website where customers can see them. You can also create testimonial videos and turn them into social media posts.

What Can Harm Your Electrical Business’s Reputation?

Here are some things that can harm an electrical company’s reputation. 

1. Unsatisfactory customer support

A good number of negative reviews result from poor customer support. The customer support staff probably replied rudely or kept people on hold forever.

According to Travis Ringe, co-owner of ProSkill Services, “Customers don’t like to navigate a call tree, they don’t like to go to voicemail. I think many people (who encounter obstacles) just hang up.”

Even worse, customers may discourage others from using your business or voice their discontent on social media.

To avoid this, encourage CSRs to pick up the phone within the first two to five rings. Also, train CSRs to listen to customer issues attentively and reply with empathy.

2. Poor website user experience

A poorly designed website reflects poorly on your brand. Website glitches like faulty navigation, broken pages, slow loading times, and 404 errors can frustrate visitors and lead them to vent their frustration online.

Here are some excellent user experience guidelines to follow:

• Have a clear site structure.

• Use standard layouts when designing each page. For example, each page should have a hyperlinked logo at the top right corner that leads to the homepage.

• Place the navigation menu in a prominent position where visitors can see it easily.

• Optimize your design for readability. Leave white space, use a legible font size and type, contrast font colors with the background, and break up text with bullets.

3. Bad customer reviews and ratings

Multiple bad reviews and low service ratings harm a company’s reputation, especially if no one responds.

Therefore, monitor your listings, social media pages, and even external platforms such as community forums and industry blogs. When you receive a negative review, find out what happened. 

If your company was at fault, apologize and offer to resolve it. But if it wasn’t, appreciate the customer's feedback and respectfully tell your side of the story.

4. Poor service quality

Poor service quality is the primary source of a negative reputation. Failing to meet or exceed customer expectations leads to bad reviews and ratings.

You can train employees to prioritize customers and go above and beyond to meet their needs.

5. Overpromising and under-delivering

Failing to live up to your promises in marketing materials and intake calls can erode customer trust and result in lawsuits that damage your reputation.

To avoid this slippery slope, ensure your marketing strategies and intake calls set realistic expectations and strive to deliver exceptional service that exceeds what you communicate.

6. Detrimental off-work employee behavior

Unfortunately, an employee's behavior outside work can damage your brand’s reputation. It’s even worse in today’s digital era, where a single social media post can amplify an employee's unprofessional behavior to thousands of people.

Therefore, hire people for technical expertise and moral behavior. Also, employees should be encouraged to behave their best even outside work.

Over to You

Reputation management is about managing what’s within your control—delivering quality customer service, promptly addressing feedback, engaging with customers, etc.

Remember to establish an open line of communication between you and the customer so customers don’t voice their frustrations in public.

Finally, streamline the entire process with comprehensive electrical software like ServiceTitan so you don’t lose track of reviews and the opportunity to resolve complaints.

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Contractors nationwide have used the software to increase their revenue by an average of 25 percent in just one year of signing up to it.