Pool Service Reputation Management: 9 Key Best Practices

What is Pool Service Reputation Management?

Pool service reputation management involves monitoring online and offline chatter about your business. 

The aim is to influence customers' perceptions of your business by responding to feedback, disproving false narratives, leveraging opportunities to promote the company, and promptly addressing negative feedback.

For a small business like yours, reputation management is neither the responsibility of one department nor a one-time event. It’s an ongoing collaborative effort involving every employee, regardless of their department.

What does reputation management include?

For pool service companies, reputational management is a multifunctional process comprising eight key pillars. 

• Maintaining a positive brand image by consistently referring to brand values and promises across all customer touchpoints.

• Tracking and responding to online reviews on popular review sites, local directories, and social media platforms (reputation monitoring).

• Delivering quality services to ensure a great customer experience.

• Researching peoples’ perceptions of your pool service company using surveys and customer focus groups.

• Monitoring how your reputation stacks up against competitors.

• Soliciting online reviews from customers via post-job surveys, emails, calls, and forms.

• Leveraging data insights to ensure customer satisfaction.

• Creating a crisis management and communication strategy to deal with reputational crises quickly.

Why is Reputation Management Important for Pool Service Businesses?

Pool companies have a lot to gain from implementing reputation management strategies.

For example, Russel Furr, owner of Culpeper Home Services, used a combination of online reviews and search engine optimization (SEO) to grow his 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.”

Furthermore, data from multiple studies shows customers increasingly evaluate local service providers using their reputation and reviews.

• 85 percent of customers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

• After reading reviews, 90 percent of customers say they’re more likely to purchase from a business.

• 76 percent of customers say they always read reviews when searching for local businesses.

The data above shows that any pool company that does not practice reputation management risks losing potential customers to competitors. Even worse, a potential customer may never use your company because of just one negative review or one-star rating.

Other benefits of pool service reputation management include the following.

• Portrays professionalism: Implementing reputation management strategies, such as training employees on what to post online, protects your reputation. It also helps your company appear professional, attracting clients.

• Builds customer loyalty and trust: Customers are more likely to trust a company with a positive reputation, as it proves it can maintain and clean their pool. Trust is vital to any business transaction and helps to generate sales and revenue.

• Grows brand visibility: Delivering quality services and encouraging customers to leave multiple online reviews promote your brand to potential customers and increase brand awareness. 

• Helps you understand customers’ needs: Monitoring customer feedback delivers valuable insights. These insights help pool companies to understand their target customer’s needs and pain points. You can use these insights to make informed decisions, improve service quality, and run effective marketing campaigns.

• Improves local search ranking: Search engines like Google favor companies with stellar online reputations, determined by review volume and quality. 

For example, a company with multiple positive reviews and a five-star rating is likelier to earn a place in the local map pack than another with several negative reviews and a two-star rating.

• Differentiating your company from competitors: Growing a reputation for quality pool maintenance and cleaning services differentiates your company. This helps attract new customers, retain existing ones, and potentially charge premium rates for your services.

Pool Service Reputation Management Best Practices

Here are the top pool service reputation management best practices.

Let’s explore a detailed breakdown of each one.

1. Generate customer reviews

The number one way to maintain a positive reputation is to generate decent reviews from satisfied customers. Prospects are more likely to believe the words of a customer than branded advertisements and promotional messages.

Reviews prove that your company has a track record for delivering quality services, making earning the trust of pool service leads easier.

Experts advise business owners to continuously and proactively generate reviews, regardless of the amount they already have. This is crucial since customers consider review recency when evaluating local companies.

“We see that homeowners and consumers look at ratings and reviews before anything else when they're making their buying decisions. And this is across the different categories in the trade industries we support,” says Ann Moenius, Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives at Angi.

Here are some tips for generating customer reviews consistently.

• Send review requests immediately after a job is completed. The customer will be more open to leaving a review when the excellent service the technician provided is still fresh in their minds.

• Make it easy for customers to leave reviews. Encourage technicians and CSRs to walk customers through the process of leaving reviews. You can also design postcards with clear instructions for leaving online reviews.

• Solicit reviews via multiple channels. You can use text messages, chatbots, emails, and calls. Remember to include a link to the review platform.

• Create accounts on each review site your target customer visits when searching for local service providers.

ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management software helps home service companies generate multiple reviews quickly with minimum effort.

“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 more automation to it,” says ServiceTitan Strategic Project Manager Heather Donaldson. 

You can program the software to automatically send customer review requests containing links to review platforms once a technician clicks “complete” on the Mobile App. 

This helps generate authentic reviews that capture the exact details of the service provided since the service is still fresh in the customer’s mind.

For example, Nova Basement Systems grew from 19 Google reviews and an average of 3.4 stars to 122 reviews and a 4.7-star average after just one year of using ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management software.

According to Mike Flores, the company recently won a $40,000 project because the customer didn’t find any negative reviews. They used the software to respond to and resolve every negative review.

“Had I not had Marketing Pro to have people tell us how great we are at communication, what's the likelihood she would have gotten multiple bids?” Flores said. “What's the likelihood that I get the sale? So all of that came from the investment and from putting the time and energy into building that out so that way, when those requests go out for people, they respond to it. I mean, that's been huge for us.”

2. Engage with users

Engaging with users (a.k.a potential and current customers) helps you build an emotional connection with them, ultimately causing them to perceive your company positively. It allows you to turn a frustrated customer into a happy customer and access valuable feedback for improving service quality.

Furthermore, engaging with social media users grows top-of-mind awareness, as 51 percent of the most memorable brands on social media respond to customers.

The different ways you can engage with customers include the following.

• Respond to comments and brand mentions.

• Run competitions and social media giveaways.

• Share content followers will find valuable, such as maintaining optimum swimming pool water chemical balance.

• Have a consistent posting cadence. It could be three times a week, twice a day, etc.

• Regularly assess your performance and iterate based on your findings.

A Sprout Social survey shows that most customers value prompt responses to comments and brand mentions

• 16 percent expect a response in minutes

• 23 percent expect a response within one to two hours

• 30 percent expect a response on the same day

• 19 percent expect a response within two business days

To manage your social media platforms and listings and shorten response times, consider using ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management platform.

The platform notifies you or any team member whenever there’s a new review. You can respond to the review immediately from the dashboard, demonstrating your willingness to make things right.

ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management platform also allows you to create response message templates, which you can customize to each customer or pool service issue. This allows you to provide a personal touch to each complaint, which can potentially turn disgruntled customers into brand advocates.

3. Respond to negative reviews

There’s the temptation to respond only to positive reviews and ignore the negative ones. However, no matter how vile a review might be, responding to them is advisable for three reasons.

First, it demonstrates your value for customer feedback and readiness to improve. Secondly, it portrays your brand as authentic. Lastly, customers say they prefer using a business that responds to both positive and negative reviews.

When responding to negative reviews, it’s important to avoid generic responses that only aggravate the customer further. The recommended practice is to use ServiceTitan to create a boilerplate response template and adapt it to each piece of feedback.

Other rules to follow when replying to customer feedback include the following:

• Before responding, confer with the technician who performed the service that generated the complaint. This allows you to confirm specific details and avoid retracting your apology later. 

• If the customer’s message is false, start with a “thank you for your feedback” and then explain what really happened. This allows you to set the record straight, fostering trust with potential customers who may be reading the exchange.

• Send a private message after apologizing publicly to prevent competitors from taking advantage of the situation.

• Keep your responses short and clear.

• Offer to resolve the situation and make things right with discounts, free pool inspections, etc.

• Ask the customer if they are willing to update the review after you’ve resolved the issue.

ServiceTitan Marketing Pro Reputation allows you to filter reviews using their star ratings. Negative reviews are automatically sent to your customer support representatives (CSRs) for prompt response, preventing them from lingering online. 

The platform also lets you send customers a post-job survey to gauge their experience with your company before directing them to leave a review on your business listing.

This helps to protect your company’s reputation. That’s why Lee’s Air, Plumbing & Heating boldly promises 100 percent satisfaction to each customer.

“We have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So as soon as an issue arises, we want to address it right away,”  Josue Solis, operations manager, says. 

“(For the occasional one-star review), my job is to reach out to that customer right away and say, ‘What can we do to make it better?’”

4. Ensure your business information is accurate

Ensuring business information – such as your hours of operation and services – is consistent and accurate across all digital platforms, listings, and directories makes it easy for customers to contact you.

And maintaining accurate business information can boost your local rankings. Why?

Google’s algorithm heavily relies on your name, address, and phone number (NAP) available across the web to determine your relevance to local-intent queries and validate your credibility. Inconsistent and false information reduces your odds of ranking high or featuring in coveted search features.

Claim your listings in local directories to fully control them and ensure customers always find accurate information about your business. Also, optimize your website with the right keywords and business details.

Finally, consider paying data aggregators to blast your company information to relevant directories and listing platforms.

However, to save costs, consider using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro Reputation Management, which allows you to update your information across over 60 sites and directories in one go.

This helps you save time and ensure customers can always access the correct information, especially when there’s a massive change like a location change or expansion.

Recommended read: Find out more about listings management using ServiceTitan.

5. Be easily accessible

Making it easy for customers to contact you directly allows you to resolve negative experiences promptly before they escalate, minimizing the risk of the complaints going public.

By resolving their concerns promptly, you can turn dissatisfied customers into happy ones and save your company’s reputation.

You can make it easy for customers to contact you by implementing the following tips.

• Including chatbots on your website.

• Providing accurate contact information on your website, listings, and social media handles.

• Creating multiple direct contact channels for customers to reach you—email, phone, social media buttons, and text messages.

Empower customers to contact you directly with ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience software, which includes an integrated SMS feature that facilitates back-and-forth communication between customers and your employees.

With the feature, customers can ask questions, submit feedback, and reschedule appointments, while techs can update appointments, provide job-status updates, and answer questions. 

The transparent nature of this communication channel helps boost customer satisfaction and humanizes the brand, which minimizes reputational damage.

ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience software also has a Web Scheduler or Chat-to-Text website plugin, which customers can use to book jobs without the intervention of your CSRs. Every job booking automatically reflects on your dispatch board.

This seamless booking process allows customers to book at their convenience without facing the frustration of being put on hold, ensuring a positive experience.

6. Continuously monitor your online reputation

A reputation management strategy isn’t complete without a plan for tracking what people say about you (a.k.a reputation monitoring). Besides, reputation depends on people’s perception of your business, evidenced by what they say when you’re not around.

Reputation monitoring goes beyond review platforms. To understand people’s perception of your company, you need to monitor various digital channels such as:

• Community forums

• Reddit

• Review aggregators

• Social media mentions, tags, and comments

• Customer surveys

To start with reputation monitoring, discover customers' channels where they talk about your company. 

Then, identify the phrases and hashtags they use, like your brand name, pool-industry keywords, pool-service keywords, etc. You can search such platforms or ask customer-facing team members to list keywords customers use to describe their challenges.

You can also set up a Google alert for branded keywords like X pool company to receive an email notification whenever someone mentions your brand name on the web.

Finally, consider using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro Reputation Management to collect useful review insights beyond the reviewer's name.

The platform spotlights the exact job, customer, and technician that generated a specific review. This allows you to spot technicians struggling to interact with customers and the service types causing the most challenges to your team.

You can use such data metrics to improve your company’s service delivery by rewarding technicians with positive reviews. This encourages the rewardee and other employees to put in more effort.

7. Utilize testimonials

Testimonials are customer’s accounts of their experience with your company. Unlike reviews, testimonials are always positive, convincing customers to use your company over others.

Written in everyday language by real pool service customers, testimonials can connect with leads emotionally, translating into sales and a positive brand image.

Here are different ways to use testimonials to boost your brand’s reputation and generate sales.

• Use them as landing page pop-ups.

• Dedicate a section of your landing page and website to customer testimonials.

• Include them in your welcome email and lead nurture campaigns.

• Add them to paid ads to increase conversions.

• Create case studies and publish them on your blog.

• Promote testimonials on your social media pages.

8. Go above and beyond with your services

The basic tenet of reputation management is delivering quality services that surpass customer expectations. This involves ensuring a positive experience from when the customer calls to book an appointment until the technician leaves the job site.

One way to wow customers is to train technicians to identify potential issues beyond the initial call, clearly explain their findings, and recommend solutions. This shows they’re truly attentive to the customer’s needs, which builds trust.

According to Ian Goldberg, president of the commercial division at Frank Gay Services, “[the customer] wants you to call and walk them through what that solution is, so by the time you're done with the explanation, they kind of nod and just give you the go-ahead…”

“If you do a great job, build trust with that customer; they really just care that the problem goes away, and not so much about any of the other things that go on.”

Integrate customer-centricity into your company culture by emphasizing the impact of positive reviews. For example, Brittany Brewer, Marketing and Customer Service Manager at Bradbury Brothers, uses positive reviews to encourage healthy competition and display the benefits of quality service.

"If we get a really good review that shows we’re really doing something right, I’m going to send it to everybody," Brewer says. "It’s a positive part of our culture. We love getting this customer feedback."

Furthermore, ensure that the customer’s first impression of your company is positive—pick up the phone within three rings and encourage CSRs to empathize with the customer and pay keen attention to details.

To take things further, consider using ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience platform to empower customers to track techs and know their precise time of arrival. For customers, this means goodbye to checking their phones or constantly pacing around the house, ensuring a positive experience.

9. Build your social media presence

Considering the popularity of social media platforms, cultivating a social media presence is crucial to controlling people’s perceptions of your company.

Building a solid social media presence helps you connect emotionally with prospects and customers who will likely book their first appointment sooner or later.

Here are different ways to use social media platforms to manage your reputation:

• Share behind-the-scenes photos and videos.

• Respond to customer comments and brand mentions.

• Contribute to pool industry discussions and follow relevant hashtags.

• Conduct contests and giveaways.

What Can Harm Your Pool Services Business’s Reputation?

Beyond implementing the right strategies, knowing what results in a negative reputation is key to maintaining a positive reputation. Here are six key factors that can harm a pool company’s reputation:

• Low-quality customer support: Frustrated customers often resort to leaving negative reviews after a bad experience with support staff. Long hold times and interacting with a non-empathetic support staff may cause customers to vent their frustrations online and discourage others from using a company.

• Fake or negative reviews: Most customers consult reviews before picking a pool service company. Only one negative or fake review can be sufficient to cause a customer to discourage a customer from using your company.

• Bad online user experience: A poorly designed website can portray your company as unprofessional, leading to a loss of credibility. Also, factors like slow loading time, missing navigation bars, and illegible font types can frustrate customers and lead to reputation problems.

• Pool quality of service: Failing to meet and exceed customer expectations can sully a pool company’s reputation. Customers may leave negative reviews, driving prospects to competitors. 

• Making promises you can’t keep: Overpromising and underdelivering destroys a pool company’s integrity and credibility. This breeds distrust, which leads to reputational damage.

• Off-work behavior:  An employee’s behavior outside of work can have a ripple effect on a company’s reputation. Customers often subconsciously perceive employees as an extension of the brand. 

The best way to protect your company’s reputation from the above-listed factors is to invest in hiring the right people who are professionally and morally adept. Ensure you prioritize user experience when designing your website.

Finally, scrutinize the feasibility of every promise you make before announcing it.

Over to You

While you cannot control people’s thoughts and actions, you can use reputation management best practices to influence them to perceive your brand positively.

Deliver quality services, remain accessible to customers, and monitor online sentiment about your company using pool service company software like ServiceTitan.

ServiceTitan is a software designed to help service providers manage their business and streamline key operations. This increases employee productivity and revenue. Join thousands of contractors who already use it to grow their businesses.