How should letting agents generate and handle reviews?

Sally Lawson - letting agent and ARLA President, business owner and franchiser - runs Agent Rainmaker, which aims to optimise agents’ revenue raising.

Here she gives her views on reviews.

"Holidays, meals, cars: customers rarely buy anything these days without checking out the reviews to decide which company they should use. 

'And that’s definitely true of landlords – if they’re trusting the management of their property portfolio to an agency, they want to ensure that lots of people have had a positive experience with that agency before signing on the dotted line.

"It’s important to generate reviews consistently, as you want to be able to demonstrate that lots of customers are happy with the service you provide, and that you’re maintaining that high quality over a period of time. It’s no use having a good number of reviews if they all date back 10 years.

How do you get new reviews?

"Some customers will automatically leave a review, but the way to really increase those numbers is to proactively reach out to everyone you’ve worked with and ask them to leave feedback.

Choose a review site

"Search your company’s name and the word review to find out the top three sites you appear on, and assess where you are in the rankings for those sites. You’ll start off focusing on the top one, but eventually aim to increase reviews across all three.

"Research the requirements, such as whether reviewers need to authenticate their email address or log into an account – and remember that certain sites such as Google and FreeIndex will provide a free embed code once a company has a certain amount of views. Using that code on your website means visitors will see all of the latest reviews automatically, so there’s no need for you to update your site every time you get new feedback.

Get the team involved

"Set aside an hour and divide your most recent contacts (including landlords and tenants) between the entire team. Then get them on the phone speaking to as many people as they can within that hour.

'To motivate the team, you could issue a challenge whereby the person who secures the most new reviews wins a prize.

'Over time, you’ll be able to speak to everyone on your list – but starting with those you’ve had the most recent interactions with is best.

'Incorporating this review calls hour into your agency schedule regularly, and getting everyone into the habit of proactively asking for feedback from new contacts, means you’ll soon have a wealth of reviews to impress potential customers before they’ve even spoken to you."