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Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Dawn Fiala, Lisa Marsolais, Annette Ziegler, and Valerie VanBooven RN BSN provide insight into home care marketing strategies. They cover in-person, in-field sales and online marketing every other week. These podcast episodes are part of the Home Care Marketing Mastermind, sponsored by Approved Senior Network®. Find more information at https://ASNHomeCareMarketing.com
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Home Care Marketing- From Satisfied Families to New Client Conversions: The Review Flywheel Model
Trust isn't optional in home care—it's everything. When families search for care providers, the overwhelming majority look to online reviews as their north star. A staggering 94% of consumers consider these reviews trustworthy guides in their search for senior care services, with most expecting at least five reviews before they'll even consider a provider.
The math is beautifully simple: more quality reviews lead directly to more qualified leads choosing your agency over competitors. But the challenge lies in systematically capturing feedback at the right moments. Unlike retail experiences, home care satisfaction can shift dramatically from one day to the next. That's why timing is everything—when a family member calls to express how much they love their caregiver, that peak satisfaction moment is your golden opportunity to request a review.
Strategic implementation makes all the difference. Using multi-channel approaches—personalized texts, emails, thank-you cards with QR codes—increases response rates by an astounding 340% compared to single-method requests. The most successful agencies build review generation into their operational workflows, training every team member to recognize review opportunities and follow through with appropriate scripts. From 30-day check-ins to milestone celebrations, these touchpoints become natural moments to capture authentic family experiences.
The power of professional endorsements can't be overstated. Reviews from social workers, healthcare partners, and community connections carry exceptional weight, signaling to potential clients that your agency has earned respect within the professional care ecosystem. Meanwhile, handling negative feedback with grace demonstrates your commitment to continuous improvement—remember, your response isn't for the reviewer but for every future family who will read it.
Ready to transform your online reputation into a consistent lead generation engine? Start with a focused seven-day pilot program targeting your most satisfied families. With the right approach, you'll create a self-sustaining review flywheel that turns stars into starts—where every positive review brings another family through your door, seeking the exceptional care your agency provides.
Continuum Mastery Circle Intro
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
Okay, september 10th, let's go. I think everybody knows who everybody is. I'm Valerie Van Boeven, registered nurse, founder, co-owner of Approved Senior Network, glad to be with you all today. I get to present today, which is a little unusual, but I'm here for it, yay.
Speaker 2:Yay, I'm Lisa Marcella. I have been in home care forever and a day, worn all the hats there are, and I'm here just to support you guys and go through the leave-behinds how about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I am Annette Ziegler. I know many of you. Same Home care forever and a day, many years. I am the sales trainer for the sales training classes. Welcome, glad you could make it today.
Speaker 1:All right, so I got people rolling in. Okay, let's get on here. Housekeeping If you can keep your lines muted unless you're speaking, share stories, experiences and tips, ask questions, make recommendations and tell us what you want to know. If there's something we haven't covered, I can't even imagine what that is, but if there's something we haven't covered, we'll happily review it for you. Or you go back in and look at all the past recordings. I think all of 2024 and soon all of 2025 will be in there. You definitely can find some stuff. All right, Agenda. Do we want to talk? Free giveaway right now Lisa or Annette, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Annette, okay. So, annette, I guess I can do it too. So one of you will receive a set of customized leave-behinds with your logo, the colors, contact information, all of that. You must be here to win and you must promise to give us photos. We need lots of photos, yes, of you going out and about and spreading the good news.
Speaker 1:so we need lots of photos from you so if you want to pin the chats, yes in the chat, okay, yep, if you want those customized lead behinds, you have to print them. But if you want that stuff, then hit yes and then we have a picture to share with you today. So, agenda we're going to talk about why reviews control lead flow in home care the review flywheel, model Boy that's interesting Scripts and moments. Ask the right person at the right time, systems cards, qr codes, sms, email dashboard, compliance and pitfalls. No gating, fair ask incentives, done right. Seven-day pilot plan that you can implement, if you would like, how that relates to our CRM, and then Q&A and download links. And then Lisa's going to go over the leave behinds and I think we're still september, october, november, right now. Right, that is correct. All right, let's go.
Speaker 1:I name this stars to starts. Get it like a service. You start services. Turn reviews into weekly intakes. Transform your online reputation into a powerful lead generation engine. Learn how to systematically turn satisfied families into your most effective marketing advocates, creating a consistent flow of new client intakes every week.
Speaker 1:I want you all to see this picture. You see this picture right here. That is AI. That's pretty good. It's a great picture. It's not bad Not that there'd be two caregivers, necessarily, but it's pretty good. I was like, wow, this one looks like dominoes, all right. So let's talk about a roadmap. Number one review control foundation. Understand how online reviews directly impact your lead generation. We're going to talk about that. Then we're going to look at the review flywheel. That's not going to be complicated Strategic implementation, how to do it, how we see our current clients doing this. We've got folks that went from no reviews to 70 reviews. They're doing great stuff Compliance and launch. So talk about that. And, by the way, if you are our client in our marketing side, our digital marketing side, this is great because we help you with this stuff. But anybody can do what I'm about to say. So why reviews control your lead flow? Now, I made sure these were right.
Speaker 1:In home care, trust isn't optional. It's everything right. So when families search for care providers, 94% of consumers consider online reviews trustworthy and helpful when searching for senior care providers. And that comes directly from McKnight's If you've been around, you know what McKnight's is. And then 80% of respondents expect five or more reviews before deeming a provider trustworthy. That comes from reputationcom, and 72% will only choose a provider if they have four-star reviews or higher, and that also comes from reputation.
Speaker 1:That I agree, but I think it's. We have it rough in home care. It's so easy for a disgruntled employee or for somebody to be super happy one day and super mad the next. I totally get it. So, anyway, the math is simple, though it really is true that more quality reviews equal more qualified leads calling your agency instead of your competitors, I would say that the harder you work at getting more Google reviews and I'm going to focus on Google having them on your website. Having them on other platforms is also great, and if you have concentrated on a different platform besides Google, that's the one you want to highlight on your website. So if carecom or caringcom has been where you've gotten most of your reviews, then highlight that on your website as opposed to Google. But let's say you're going for more Google reviews, which I would agree is probably the right direction. Whether you love or hate Google, they run the world. So try to get more Google reviews and focus some attention on this, and the person that's in the field can also be focusing on this. It's not just online marketing we're talking about here. Everybody plays a role, the person that answers the phone in your office also plays a role. The scheduler plays a role, but the person who's doing the in-person marketing depending on how their role works can definitely be an advocate for getting more reviews, and they can work on this too.
Speaker 1:Families heavily rely on reviews when evaluating providers. The preference for home care is strong, of course. We know everybody wants to stay home, reinforcing the need for digital reputation. Caregiving demand is significant, suggesting that any research window is likely constrained, and that just means that we have't have. We have general research on reviews, but we don't have home care specific research as much, although I would say there's a couple of really good organizations out there that work hard to get you guys like Home Care Pulse, whatever they're called now those surveys that go out if you subscribe to that or if your organization subscribes to that. That really is a good way to get a take the temperature of how your clients are feeling about you and how your caregivers are feeling about you. So here's the review flywheel model Exceptional care delivery Consistently exceed family expectations through quality caregiving and responsive communication. We all are striving for this. We'd be crazy if we weren't right. More client conversations, strong review profiles, increased conversion rates leading to more signed contracts and revenue conversions, not conversations leading to more signed contracts and revenue growth.
Speaker 1:I would agree that I look at it like this Every summer we try to go somewhere for a week as a family and we either use VRBO or Airbnb, unless we're going somewhere where it's like a hotel resort thingy. But usually I look at all the houses in Gulf Shores, alabama and I'm trying to pick one that's good for our whole family and it could be all kinds of people coming. So I read all the reviews and when there's a bad review, it's not so much the bad review matters to me, but it's the way the owner answered the review that matters to me more. So if there is no answer, then that's a red flag. If there is an answer, then that's a red flag. If there is an answer and the problem was corrected or the way the answer was written tells me very clearly that the human who left the review is a nut job, then I know that they're probably a complainer about everything and maybe I should just focus on those good reviews. So if there's one bad and 15 good ones, I'm not going to. I'm going to set that one aside because obviously that person was nuts and that happens. This doesn't mean that they're really nuts, but I can be, depending on the answer. So when you have reviews, whether they are good or bad, please answer them. But if they're bad, we're going to talk about that in just a second.
Speaker 1:Strategic review requests. All right, this is the strategy for getting reviews Ask satisfied families at peak satisfaction moments, using proven scripts and multiple touch points. When you know that a client or a family member of a client is really happy in that moment, they just sent you an email, they just called the office and said we really love Mary. Or they called about something else and you say, hey, how are things going with Mary? And they say, yeah, we love Mary, she's great. We love her, mom loves her. Then boom, right now, that's it. Right.
Speaker 1:Then that moment is when you want to say hey, I was wondering if I could send email you back or just email a link to our Google profile. It really helps us to get more positive reviews to share with our community. Would you be? You don't have to put your full name. Would you be willing to do that? And sometimes they will, sometimes they won't, but it never hurts to ask. The worst they can say is no. If you wait a day, if you wait two days, if you wait a week to ask them and Mary was late this morning and caused somebody else to be late for work or whatever the issue is that's going to be a bad time to ask for a review. She was ecstatic when she left the review. Today she might not be so happy and we all know in home care, things change in a flash. Please ask when.
Speaker 1:Enhanced online presence? Fresh reviews yes, fresh reviews. If you're a review, if you have 50 reviews, but the last one was from two years ago, it's time to re-up. Take a look at where, when all those reviews came in. If you haven't had a review in, let's say, six months or a year, it's time to get some more reviews. And every time those reviews come in, copy and paste them, use them in a without names, use them in a social media post, use them on Facebook, linkedin, everywhere you can use them. Screenshot it. Whatever you need to do to let people know because they're not everyone's going to go to your Google business profile, right, or Yelp, or wherever you're doing this, make sure that you let everyone else know in your community that you got a good review. So screenshot it, use it in social media, send it to us. If you're our client, we will create a beautiful social media post for you and send it out and we will post it over and over again as it kind of rotates through the system. All right, fresh reviews, increased lead generation, higher visibility and trust signals generate more inbound calls from qualified prospects. So, of course, the more, the better reviews you have, the more fresh they are.
Speaker 1:Now, seo-wise it does seem to help, but I will tell you that in some cases we've seen home care agencies with no reviews or one review outrank people with 70 reviews. It doesn't happen very often. It really depends on a couple of things. If you're in a rural area and there isn't a lot of competition, if you are in an area where, yeah, there's not a lot of competition and so Google on the desktop is going to go by proximity, so if you're looking for home care in West Winnemucca Nevada, the closer your offices to West Winnemucca Nevada center, the center of town, then you're going to show up first, whether you have five reviews or 25 reviews anyway compared to your competition, whether you have five reviews or 25 reviews anyway compared to your competition. So there are some caveats to that, but the more reviews the better, and sometimes I'm shocked when I see somebody or two or three people completely outranking somebody with a bunch of reviews. But I have a feeling it has to do with proximity to city center. So that's one of the things you just can't do anything about Scripts and perfect timing.
Speaker 1:You could probably come up with your own scripts, your own words that you want people to use. If the person on the phone has a hard time asking, you might just give them something to read or something to at least a direction. Ms Johnson, I want to follow up on how things are going with Maria. I can see you're both developing a great relationship. That makes my day. Would you mind sharing your experience online? It really helps other families find us when they need care.
Speaker 1:The part where it says it really helps other families that's the part I like the most. When you tell someone else that it really helps others in our community know that we provide good services. That's the piece that makes them want to leave a review, because they want to help others have a good experience just the way they did. So that's the part that I really like about this. This is 30-day check-in script. It could be any time Problem resolution follow-up. I'm so glad we were able to resolve that scheduling issue quickly. Your feedback helps us improve our process. Since we turned this around for you, would you consider sharing your overall experience? It shows other families we truly care about making things right.
Speaker 2:That's a risky one, but it is, but I like how it turns it into a positive, like we fixed it. Now, what do you think? Yeah, we fixed it.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I want them to say they screwed this up, but anyway, if they can send you an email, even if it's not going to go on Google, they just send it to you via email.
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 1:They could send you an email and you could use that Milestone celebration. What a milestone Six months of excellent care. I love hearing how much your father enjoys his time with Sarah. Families often ask me for references about our long-term care relationships. Would you mind sharing your story online to help them see what's possible? Sharing their story might require a lot of writing. I don't know if that's exactly how I would say that, but maybe would you mind sharing your experience online via a little review for us or something like that.
Speaker 1:But that is good your check-ins, your milestones. If people are happy when you do a reassessment or whatever it is in your state or your area, you have to do that's a great time to ask, yeah.
Speaker 2:I like the three different spins, though, because there's all types of things going on in home care, so you can tweak those however you want. So having a guideline there is really nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and don't wait. There's all kinds of times when you can ask Never wait. There's reasons you can ask Okay, technology systems at scale using a multi-channel approach is really good. I mentioned that if someone leaves a review on Google my Business, they should also. You should take that, not ask them to leave a review again. But they've obviously put it in a public place. So you have permission. Don't use their names, but share that by either screenshotting it or typing it into and giving it to the person who does your social media and let them create a pretty quote card or whatever they're going to do for your social media. And let them create a pretty quote card or whatever they're going to do for your social media and share that everywhere. Don't just leave it sitting on Google. If you have a website I know if you have a website with us we suck in all the Google reviews so they show up nicely on your website. If you don't have that option, you can always screenshot it and have your web developer place it on there one way or another, either by typing it in or making a picture.
Speaker 1:Anyway, what are some ways that people can get more reviews? So one thing that I don't know if anybody uses this or not. But if you've had a plumber or a service provider in your house recently plumber, hvac person a lot of times they have a tablet specific to their business and they will have you pay the bill right there with their little swipey swipe or whatever they're doing, and then they'll turn that tablet around and say would you mind leaving us a review or answering a few questions or whatever it is. And sometimes you can leave them a review right then and there. You don't have to, but you can and that might be a little presumptuous. But you can also leave a thank you card behind. If you were there, your nurse is in the house, your person who does the reassessment or assessment or whatever's happening. The caregivers can leave behind a card. This could be in the person's packet that you start services and you can remind them hey, there's a little business card or maybe it's on your brochure or whatever in your packet. If you could scan that QR code and leave us a review, that would be awesome. So I think these little cards are a great way to help people remember to give you reviews or just leave them behind.
Speaker 1:Sms follow-up and email campaigns Okay, so in our CRM we do, and you can do this any way you want. You don't have to use our CRM. But in ours we have a review system, which I think I'll talk about in another slide. But it does send out to the person of your choice. It's not automated. It doesn't automatically send out these requests without your knowledge. You choose the person or you enter the person into the system and you say review and boom, it sends out a text which is very simple, very easy and not super intrusive, and you can see the example there. And then it also will send out an email. And I just put the example up here in the top right. You don't have to. Obviously, we fill in those blanks, but so it's a simple email and a simple text. Our system does that three times over the course of 10 days, so it's not like it's every day asking for a review and it will stop after three times, or if they leave a review, it will automatically stop. So those are the kinds of systems that really get people right where they live and if they're on their phone, boom, there it is.
Speaker 1:I would say this is I see this happening a lot. Lisa, you work with our clients a lot on our system. So let me see if that's my yeah, let me see if that. Oh yeah, I'm going to talk about that when we get there. Let's talk about what your experience is with our clients using that system.
Speaker 1:So, using multi-channel approaches like this email text and whatever else you can do calling see a 340% higher review response than a single method approach. So just asking one time isn't going to get it. But if you use multi-method approach, you're probably going to get them to leave your review. All right, compliance and smart practices, no review gating. Anytime you ask for a review, the best practice is always to make sure they can go directly to that Google link and they can leave a review. Fair ask principle Only request reviews from genuinely satisfied families.
Speaker 1:Of course, if you wouldn't feel comfortable asking them in person, don't ask them digitally. I think we, being in home care, you know that right off the nail. You're not going to ask somebody. You're just not going to randomly send out a bunch of requests, incentive guidelines. I have never we've never asked for like a review and I'll send you a $50 gift card. That has not come up for us. We've not done that.
Speaker 1:I don't know if clients do that, but I don't think they do. I've had a couple who have A couple who have $50 is a lot. I mean, a $5 Amazon gift card is no big deal, a charitable donation in their name. I think that would be to me better. But if they want to go get a coffee or something, I mean buy them a cup of coffee for review that doesn't seem that big of a deal. Totally up to you guys how you would handle that. Be careful with it, just like you would with giving gifts to referral sources. Keep them simple, small and, generally speaking, probably this one's really happy. They probably don't need an incentive.
Speaker 2:This was more like a employee incentive to get to ask. So that's yeah, sorry To ask, but to remember to ask people. Hey, leave us a review.
Speaker 1:Now that's nice. So the competition, yeah, you get, if that you get to come in, maybe for every five reviews that you get that you ask people and then we'll give you employee a $10 gift card or whatever it is. That's good, just give people incentive to ask for the reviews. So the goal isn't to manipulate it, to make it easier for happy families to share their authentic experiences with others who need care. We don't talk a lot here about video reviews or video testimonials, but I'm going to tell you right now if you can get a video testimonial out of somebody. I think Annette's been successful. It's a different thing. I get it, but she's got what? 50, over 50 video testimonials for us on our sales training and it's amazing that she's able to do that.
Speaker 3:I was going to say when I was in home care and marketing, part of my job was to get the Google reviews. It's really not that easy, and everything you're saying, valerie, is true. Somebody says something is going great, right then, and there Another. You can also get reviews from your referral sources and communities, and what I would do if I had a referral source and we were connected really well. I'd say, hey, I'll leave you a Google review, will you leave me one? That's another way to get reviews too. Sometimes you have to open your Google page right there to have them do it, because a lot of times they'll say they're going to do a review and then they never do it because they get busy. But I do want to add getting reviews from social workers, any of your referral sources, any communities that you work closely with. People like to see those reviews too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if another professional is going to, they feel comfortable enough to vouch for you. Oh, my goodness, that's really good. So, yeah, I've left reviews for some of our clients that I've known for a very long time, not just somebody you know that just came on board, but if I've been friends with them for a long time and they're been our client for a long time and I know they provide great care, I've left a professional to professional review just because it's a nice thing to do. I don't do it for every month, but if somebody really is good at what they do, I think it's great. As a professional, leave them a review. Yeah, thanks for those ideas. Okay, so, seven day pilot program launch.
Speaker 1:If you're having trouble getting reviews and you want to get everybody involved. You want to get your staff involved, or maybe it's just one or two people that are really in touch with the clients. There's a couple of ways you can do this. You can do it however you want, but if you wanted to, you could try to identify your top 10 satisfied families, create review request cards, showed you that and set up a tracking spreadsheet. You could do it online, you could do it on paper or whatever you want to do Train your team on the approved scripts and compliance guidelines. So obviously we're not giving anything away, but you might give them an incentive, just like Lisa said, to get some more reviews. And then, days three and four make personal calls to your identified families using those scripts or just give them some ideas of what we're looking for. Follow up immediately with review cards or digital requests, text them, email them based on their preferred communication method. And then, days five through seven, track response rates, review submissions and family feedback. Adjust your approach based on what's working best for your specific client base and market. So just having it your next meeting, your next group meeting, to say here we're going to try this, we need to get more reviews. Let's pick 10 clients who do we think would be a good set of satisfied. Maybe it's five clients who do you think those families are? Who's going to take the initiative to call and who's going to make sure we monitor and optimize and make some assignments and start getting more reviews, or it might be just you, all right, let's talk about ASN Spark CRM integration.
Speaker 1:So for those of you who use us for online home care marketing and there's many systems out there, so this isn't the only one, but for us we use automated triggers. So we set up an automatic review system inside your CRM account and when you add someone, you add their name, their phone number, their email address and it triggers. We give you a specific form to fill out. It triggers the system to send them a request for review. So if you're using our system on the fly, you can just go to that form, fill it out and bam, that person gets and you can be on the phone with them.
Speaker 1:When you do it, that person gets a text and an email requesting a review. It gets them the link. Everything's there for them. Performance analytics we can track inside our system which review requests generate the highest response rates, correlate review activity with new lead generation and client acquisition, and so, anyway, what happens is we have a pipeline set up inside that CRM and you can see how many requests were sent out, how many reviewed, how many unsubscribed and said no and how many left. If they left a review, I guess star rating or I can't remember what the other thing is. If they feedback, the feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's like a feedback form and a start rating.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if they don't want to leave a Google review which we get, we totally understand. Some people don't have Google accounts. They don't want a Google account. They're older. They're just not happening.
Speaker 1:There is a form. They can just leave a generic. They can leave a review on a form so they don't have to go to Google or Yelp or anywhere else. They can just leave you a review. And what you do with that then is make sure we're aware and we will post it on your website, make a cute social media post with it or whatever else you want us to do, so you can measure how many new inquiries specifically mention your online reviews. So that's another thing. When people are on the phone, when you have calls coming in, whoever's answering the phone is hopefully asking how did you hear about us? And hopefully the person will say I did a Google search and I saw you online, or always saw your reviews, or social worker referred me and I looked you up online. Whatever those things are, keeping track of them is really important. So, lisa, you've had a lot of experience with clients who you have read on how to use this, and they've been pretty successful, haven't they?
Speaker 2:They have. They have One specifically. I think it went up like 35% in one month your reviews, which is just excellent, excellent and the feedback form. What it does, too, is if someone goes in, so the automation sends the link right and when you click on the link it says what? There's a star system, what do you want to leave? And it gives you a one to five. So if you were to choose under four, it actually doesn't go to your Google business, it goes to a feedback form.
Speaker 2:So I really like that and I encourage people to use the system that we have in place, because if there's somewhere you're falling short or a caregiver fell short, that gives you the opportunity to speak with someone, to give that person a call and make it good right, Even if it's something, just someone who's just being a complainer, but you have the opportunity to make it right with them and then in the future, maybe they're going to leave you a five star. So I love that feature. And then, of course, there is the reporting system that you were talking about Pipeline. Yeah, the pipeline. It tells you what stage the person is in, how many reviews you have, and you can even go to a little like reporting dashboard that shows you your percentages for that month, year over year or month over month. So I love that.
Speaker 2:I have quite a few people who I've been working on it with steadily just growing those reviews, and then two every once in a while. Someone can go directly and if there's anything that you need help replying to because you need to step back from your baby and let someone else touch it, we will help with that too. So it's a really great system. I love it. I've seen smiles and increases and, yeah, lots of people who are using it as as instructed, as it's meant to be, are really loving it and gets getting lots and lots of reviews.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely I've. We've. It's crazy how many, and it just one at a time. You don't have to send out a request. You can just do one person at a time and over a couple of months. If you're consistent about it, that's 10 more reviews.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the hard part of all this, which is negative reviews from clients and negative reviews from caregivers, which happens all the time. So you are not alone. This is something that happens to everyone eventually and if you've been in the business for any length of time, you've seen this on Google specifically. If someone leaves you a negative review and they are a caregiver that got fired or was not even, I've even had seen them that they weren't hired, so it wasn't like they work there, they weren't even hired and they're mad because they weren't hired and they leave some kind of negative review and then they go to their friends and say go here and leave a negative review, and that can really destroy people. That is just terrible. So we can sometimes, without promises, get those reviews removed and the way we do that and you guys can do this too moved, and the way we do that and you guys can do this too, we have everybody who has their ears turned on in your organization and in ours.
Speaker 1:Go to that review and report it. There's a little flag next to report it and when you pick why you're reporting it. It's great if you all pick the same thing. Now I just did this recently for someone and I don't know if that's still there, but conflict of interest is the first thing I choose. If it's not that, then there's a couple of other options. But because if they're a caregiver, they're not supposed to be technically reviewing. They were not a customer, so they're not supposed to be leaving a review. However, if a caregiver does leave a great review, then hallelujah, we're not supposed to be leaving a review. However, if a caregiver does leave a great review, then hallelujah, we're not gonna report that. That's awesome. We do want caregivers honestly to leave us good reviews. But when it comes to a negative review, you can report those as a conflict of interest. Sometimes, a lot of times, if it's a nice number of people who report that, then Google will eventually take it down. It might take them a couple weeks, but they will. Yelp is the same way you can report and if you have more than one person report it using the same verbiage, then usually it gets taken down.
Speaker 1:However, let's talk about if you should answer. So for every positive review that comes in, you need to answer that review with a thank you when someone try to get a keyword in there, if you can leave those positive reviews. If it's a negative review and you know it's probably a caregiver, even if it's anonymous looking, don't answer it right away. Don't answer it right away. Don't answer any review right away If you're going to report it. You don't want to leave an answer right. So try not to leave an answer. Go and report it. Have multiple people report it. Don't leave any remarks. If it's a real client with a real review and it's negative, take a deep breath, step back. Don't answer it right.
Speaker 1:Then when you see it, because it's only going to be an emotional negative thing, some people will send us the negative review and say could you answer this for us or could you come up with an answer for this? Now we don't automatically go in and answer those because we have no idea what the story is. We're happy to answer them. If you give us some context. We could write something that's pretty professional. Also, if you do use chat, gpt or perplexity or any of those you can ask give it that system, the situation, the nuts and bolts of the situation, and ask chat or perplexity to write an answer that's professional and not accusatory or anything like that, and usually it'll come up with a pretty good response. It completely unemotional, just completely no emotion, just or, if you want to be, we're so sorry or that's whatever, but I it depends on what the review is about.
Speaker 1:We have had a couple of times when people have done that and they reviewed the wrong home care agency. Yeah, so we, we have reported those. Believe it or not, people don't know what they're doing online and so they will sometimes. So if you're in a part of a franchise and you have several locations, next, houston's a good example. Houston is gigantic, so there's one franchise owner up here, there's one down here, there's one over on this side of town and one over on this side of town. There's 2 million people in Houston, so it's probably divided up into four areas, and so they will leave the wrong or a bad review on the wrong agency owners because they don't know the difference, they don't know which blah, blah, blah ABC home care it was. They think they've got the right one, but it's actually not, anyway. So we have had to work with that as well, and that can. Sometimes that can be fixed, sometimes not, but that's a bummer. So anyway, negative reviews just be careful with those.
Speaker 3:We have a comment. Valerie Tess said that they got flagged by Google for too many caregiving reviews not her location but they were really good ones, so it might've maybe because they had too many good reviews all at once from caregivers Google has been or just caregivers. Sometimes they take things off in yeah, actually didn't we have-.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was so upsetting. It is upsetting. We have genuine reviews. There is no. The only weird one was one. I did delete it finally after 10 years. I reviewed us like 15 years ago and that was stupid but I just was like, hey, we're great and whatever, I was thinking of our business, but anyway, we don't have none of the reviews on ours. Are anybody that we, they're all clients and they're all real. But somebody left a review and it was like, nah, we're not going to show that one and it was a great review there was actually like five almost in a row.
Speaker 2:I don't know something. Yeah, that's why I was and I wouldn't have known, except for I like watch. So I screenshotted them and then I went back to look for them and I was like, where did they go? But sometimes finding doesn't even make sense. Right, you're like, okay, google, just put the reviews away.
Speaker 1:I mean you don't even know how they. I guess it says. It says ABC Home Care is the greatest place to work for and the same, and pretty much everybody's saying the same thing. I guess it. I don't know. I feel like they've got bigger fish to fry than a home care agency would have caregivers. But how about your local steakhouse that's been paying lovely when? Or maybe spread the wealth around a little bit. Maybe not all Google, maybe do a Google, do a Yelp?
Speaker 1:I am not a fan of Yelp. I will tell you that right now, never have been. However, the problematic part of Yelp is that if people do like it, like the consumers are liking it in your area or use it a lot in your area, which I know, like California, it's a bigger. I think more people are into it there, maybe East Coast and West Coast and if they leave a negative review on it and it's the only one you have there because you've not been focused on it, that's a bummer, because Yelp shows up pretty much in most of the searches. I've tried to get some of those taken down, sometimes successful, other times not. So that's been a little rough. But I'd say spread the wealth a little bit If you can have people leave. If caregivers leave a positive review, let them pick. They can do Google, yelp, c, caringcom maybe I don't know if that's even possible there or maybe something else that you can get a review on. That might help. And you can still use them in social media and you can still have them on your website if you want, but maybe Google won't be as crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, to get penalized for having good reviews is so ridiculous, weird. Yeah, I do recall a home care agency owner where it was no longer a client hasn't been in years and years and suddenly they were like they had like from five to 50 reviews all of a sudden, and I didn't directly ask them, but someone else on our team had talked to them and knew that they were paying clients to leave good reviews, like 50 bucks or something and eventually Google caught on. I don't know how they caught on or what was going on Maybe too many reviews all at once, I don't know and shut that whole listing down. Wow know, and shut that whole listing down because it figured you knew, or I don't know. I don't know what. It was not something that we had any part in and I was like, oh, but yeah.
Speaker 1:So just there's so many scammers out there that do fake review, have people do fake reviews that google's just happy to shut you down anyway, but they all still run the world. Most of the time it's great to get those, but if you ever have a negative review and you're looking for some help, reach out to one of us. We're pretty good at either getting them taken down or answering them in a way that is not emotional and professional and makes you look good because you're really answering for the next person down the line. You're not answering. You're never going to satisfy that client, but most of the time but but it's for the next person who comes to that listing and is looking.
Speaker 3:So, oh, 245 yes, we have room left in our September 23rd. We just had a class start today. I see a couple of my members here. Our next sales training class is September 23rd. I still have a couple spots open and I just added an October date. Reach out if you're interested. We would love to have you there. Like Valerie said, go on our website and listen to our testimonials. We have over 50 testimonials of people that took the class and they tell you what they gained from it and how it helped them. So I just had somebody actually that just started class today and she said by listening to those testimonials she was convinced that this is what she needed to do to help her guide her in her sales training.
Speaker 1:So many nice people have left so many amazing testimonials. I just can't believe it. She sends me a new testimonial, a new video testimonial, like sometimes once a week, and I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 3:God, it's always so exciting, I got a referral, I booked a lunch and learn they. I'm like, oh my God, it's always so exciting, I got a referral, I booked a lunch and learn they just called me with a referral. I got a 24 seven. That's what we're there to help you with, yeah. Reach out to me if you want more information on it.
Speaker 2:All right Awesome. Awesome, all right Last chance, so type yes for done for you. Leave behind here in the chat. I just put something in the chat for what are we doing? November?
Speaker 2:wait I don't know probably november, we'll give away in november. So once we get down to the november, leave behind, you'll see. But last chance here, type yes, in region, okay, so we, oh yeah. So shout out to martha at home care services. They know she look at this. This is so cute. I love the cutest thing I've ever seen. Oh, my god, love it. And yes, I'm all about it. It's really cute, really love it. She said it's. The box is the perfect size to fit all those little things plus a business card, so that little review card that could go in there yeah, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1:Put your review card with your qr code on it with your little chat.
Speaker 2:Those are so cute yes, adorable, I love it, absolutely love it and these are in your, these are your idea, right? These little yeah yeah, that's the idea I think that's it okay. Awesome, awesome, cool. Okay, thank you all for joining. Thanks for coming. Yeah, thank you all. Right, see y'all, bye, bye.
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