Repair Shop Advice

Yes, you definitely should. But there’s more to it than just posting a quick response.

You’ll want to respond appropriately to the type of review you received. We’ll break them down into three different groups – good reviews, bad reviews and false reviews.

Responding To Good Reviews

As you probably already know, good reviews are the easiest types of reviews to respond to and by going a step or two beyond just saying thanks, you can help your auto parts store in ways you may not even realize. If you can, an excellent way to do this is to mention something personal about the customer who left the review and to reference the parts or service that you provided for them.

But first, you should respond by thanking them for taking the time to post the review for your store. Time is precious, so it’s important to show appreciation to a customer who is willing to use their time to help your auto parts store.

Second, if you are able to include something personal about the customer or the shop, it helps you demonstrate that you really care about them as a customer. This helps keep the relationship with the customer strong and also serves as a clear indication to potential customers who will be looking at the reviews that you truly care about your customers.

Finally, including something about the parts you sold to them or the service you provided will help your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This helps to increase your chances of appearing in the Local Pack (the list of 3-4 businesses that shows up just below the map in a Google search results page) when somebody searches for those parts or that service in your area. It will also help your website search better for those parts and services, as long as it is linked to your Google My Business profile.

Responding To Bad Reviews

One of the most difficult things to do is to keep your cool and respond reasonably when somebody blasts your auto parts store in a review, especially if you feel strongly that they are wrong. Your instinct will likely be to tear into them in the response. But it is critically important to remember that potential customers who read the review will have no way of knowing who is right and who is wrong. If you quickly hit send on that non-professional response, potential customers will believe that you are not professional. As unfair as that may be, that’s the way it works.

Your best move is to respond respectfully, typing out something like “we are sorry you feel that way about your visit to our store.” It’s also helpful to include a line that states that you work to provide excellent customer service – “we strive to provide the best service in town to all our customers.” And to follow that up with “I’d be happy to talk to you personally about your experience.”

If you know that something went wrong during the interaction with the customer, it’s a good idea to be straightforward and more apologetic. Almost all customers understand that nobody gets it right all of the time. And, potential customers reading the review and seeing your response will respect your accountability and be more likely to choose your store if they see that type of response.

If you state in your response that “our goal is 100% customer satisfaction. Unfortunately we missed the mark with you. I’d really appreciate the chance to talk to you and discuss how we can make it right.” It can go a long way toward demonstrating your care for your customers in the face of a mistake.

Responding To False Reviews

Every once in a while we’ll see a review get posted for one of our customers that is either mistaken or blatantly false. An example would be if somebody writes that they visited your auto parts store on a Sunday, but you are not open on Sundays.

If this happens to you, it is totally appropriate to point out that they must be mistaken. Posting a response that includes “we are sorry you had a bad experience, but it could not have been with our store. We haven’t been open on Sunday in 20 years,” is a good way to address it. It is also totally appropriate to ask them to remove the review because of the mistake. Feel free to encourage them to stop by your store for a much better customer experience.

Like with most things, you probably want to avoid hard and fast rules when it comes to responding to reviews for your auto parts store. But, if you use these recommendations as a guide, and always keep in mind that it will not just be the person who wrote the review that reads your response, but many potential customers, you can further leverage Google reviews as a way to help you gain more customers.

You may also want to read: Should I Ask Customers to Post Reviews for My Auto Parts Store?

If you’d like help getting more reviews, please contact us at 866-665-1605 or Team_RSW@RepairShopWebsites.com.

The short, and important, answer is: Yes!

But unfortunately, many auto parts store owners and managers are hesitant to ask a customer to post a review. You may feel that asking a customer to post a review will come off as pushy or tacky. Other business owners think that if the customer isn’t going to post a review on their own, then the business didn’t really earn the review in the first place.

Those feelings are understandable. However, we conducted a survey in 2019 of nearly 600 auto repair shop customers and here are a couple of important findings that came directly from that survey:

• 18% posted reviews for a shop after not being asked
• 62% posted reviews for a shop after being asked

Now, you can say that the survey was for auto repair shop customers and not auto parts store customers. And that is true. But, chances are good that you would see the same type of numbers among your own customers. So, with that, a key finding of the survey is that customers are three times more likely to post a review if you ask them to than if you leave them to do it on their own.

This point grows even more important as your potential customers see reviews, especially Google reviews, as the new social proof. Social proof is the concept that when people are inexperienced in making certain decisions they will seek out conformity and copy the actions of others to avoid making a mistake and not being accepted.

This explains a significant reason for why reviews are an important tool to help you attract new customers to your store through your online presence. Strongly positive reviews help potential customers feel confident that they will not be making a mistake by trusting you to make the right parts recommendations, or if they are a repair shop, that you will deliver the right parts when you say you will. And, the more reviews that you have, the stronger the signals of conformity will be in their brain, even if they don’t realize that is what is driving them to make the decision.

Another reason why reviews are a critically important tool in helping you attract new customers from the web is that Google uses reviews as a factor in where your auto parts store is displayed on the local pack and in organic search results. For the local pack (the listings that are usually right below the map), the number one factor is proximity – how close your store is to where the user is who is conducting the search. But not too far behind that are:

• #12 – Quantity of Native Google Reviews (with text)
• #19 – High Numerical Ratings of Business by Google Users (4-5 stars)

Those rankings are out of around 200 factors, so both of them are in the top 10% of factors.

And while you are asking a customer for a review, go ahead and ask them to mention the specific parts you sold them, or the services you provided to them. That’s especially true if it’s a part you’d like to sell more of or a service you’d like to perform more often (maybe because of the high margin), or because it’s something that you have particular expertise in. The #14 factor for the Local Pack is “Product/Service Keywords in Reviews.”

If one of your key selling features to repair shops/installers is your speedy delivery, then ask a few of your repair shop customers that you know are particularly happy to post a review mentioning your quick delivery service.

If you’d be happy selling all parts related to brakes all day because there is a significant demand and a good margin, then ask customers who you’ve recently helped choose the right brake parts for their car to post a review and mention the parts they purchased along with your expert advice.

To bring it all together – YES, ask your happy customers to post reviews for your auto parts store, especially on Google and Facebook. And don’t stop there, ask them to include specifics about the parts they purchased and the services that you provided, as well as their experience in working with you.

If you are interested in hearing more about reviews, we encourage you to listen to Episode 5 of our Busy Bays Podcast – What are your Google Reviews doing for you? It’s geared more specifically to auto repair, but we believe you’ll also find quite a bit of information that applies to parts stores as well.

And if you’d like help getting more reviews for your auto parts store, please contact us at 866-665-1605 or Team_RSW@RepairShopWebsites.com.

Have you set up and/or claimed the Google My Business profile for your auto parts store? If you haven’t, or if you are letting somebody else manage it for you, please read on for some very important words of warning.

The Google My Business Profile

First, if you are unfamiliar with the Google My Business (GMB) profile, or just aren’t sure what it is called, it is the big box that shows up most often on the right side of Google search results when you search for a business by name. As an example, Repair Shop Websites’ GMB profile is below.

The information in your GMB profile serves as your online identity for anyone searching Google for your business name. The way it is set up varies on mobile and desktop, but it has your business address, hours, phone number (with click-to-call on mobile), a link to your website, Google Reviews, and a button to get directions to your business. If someone types your name into Google, they’re probably expecting to see this information pop up on the right side of their screen. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a GMB profile, they aren’t going to see it and may think you are out of business.

Having a completed GMB profile also makes you more likely to show up for any searches related to auto parts or auto parts stores. When a business owner reaches out to Google and claims their GMB profile, it gives Google more confidence about the information being provided for that business. When a parts store owner puts store hours into their GMB profile, it’s another indication to Google that the parts store is an active business. When an owner puts the parts store’s current address into GMB, Google knows it isn’t going to accidentally send a Google user to an old address, or an address that’s floating around online for the store but is incorrect.

Simply put, if you don’t have a GMB profile, spending 15 minutes completing it will significantly improve your web presence and increase the likelihood that auto repair shops and consumers in the area will find you when they are searching for auto parts. That’s why we reach out to every one of our customers and try to help them build or claim their Google My Business profile. We want to make sure our customers are taking advantage of this critical tool.

The Danger of Not Claiming Your Google My Business Profile

Unfortunately, GMB can hurt you, too. A serious word of warning – if you don’t reach out to Google and claim your GMB profile, anyone can add your business to GMB or make edits to your GMB profile. If Google doesn’t know very much about you, they will depend on crowdsourcing to find out where you are located, what products and services you provide, how to contact you, and when your store is open.

This means a Google user could request an edit and change your hours to “Closed” on Fridays. They could change your phone number to a competitor’s phone number. They could even redirect your website link to somewhere unsafe, like a phishing or ransomware website. All of this can do serious damage to your business.

Protect Your GMB Profile Credentials

Another critical word of warning – don’t let anyone walk away with your online identity. If an employee has your GMB login information, make sure you also have access to that information, in a secure place. If you cancel services with a vendor who manages your GMB profile, make sure they provide you with your login information and change the password when they are no longer serving you.

Losing your Google My Business login is a lot like losing your real identity. You will lose the ability to control the information online about your store, and that information is likely to become less accurate, and potentially damaging, over time.

There is another key reason to keep up with this login. If you can’t locate it but need to update something on your GMB profile, you may have to ask Google to “reset” your password so you can gain access. We’ve probably all had to do this with a lost password for an account. However, there’s a significant difference for GMB profiles.

If you do need a GMB profile login reset, there’s a good chance Google will delete all of the information about the “old store” at your location. Google wants to make sure that a person starting a new business isn’t earning credit (or blame) that was associated with the last business at that address. That means that all of your store’s information, pictures, and even reviews – all those things that help you solidify your web presence – are subject to deletion, and you’ll be starting from scratch again. If you’ve taken the time to build up a solid number of excellent reviews, this is a disaster you shouldn’t have to experience.

To learn how Repair Shop Websites can help you manage your Google My Business profile, call us at 855-394-6397 or email us at Team_RSW@RepairShopWebsites.com.