Stephanie Glenn is the customer service manager at Paul’s Pest Control, a privately owned and operated pest control company that has been serving Florida since 1971. Their positive word-of-mouth referrals were working well for their business among long-time locals, but Stephanie realized years ago that they were missing a huge opportunity to also work with new residents.
“Many new residents don’t care about what’s been going on for the last 30 years,” explained Glenn. “They just care about getting something taken care of right here and right now. When someone’s moving into the area they don’t have that history of Paul’s Pest Control, so they’re learning about us through our Google and Facebook reviews to figure out what company they should use.
As Stephanie and the team at Paul’s Pest evaluated Podium, they realized how big of a key differentiator it was to have text capabilities with their review solution.
“The biggest thing was the fact that we could send reviews via text message,” said Glenn. “Text message is a much better way to reach the customers than an email. I see this even on a personal level, I check my text messages all day. If you send me a text message, I’m going to see it right away. People are constantly checking their text messages. So, after seeing what Podium could deliver, I walked back into our management meeting, and told everyone, ‘We need to do this.’”
Growing Your Business
Improving your online review presence is a great investment because it can enhance all of your other customer acquisition efforts. “Our rating jumped a half star on Google within 24 hours,” affirmed Glenn. “We’re now having customers tell us that they chose us simply because we had the best reviews on Google. We got more reviews from Podium in one month than we had gotten in five years through our old method.”
Podium has also been able to help Paul’s Pest Control grow their business in a new market as well.
“We recently started operating in a different city where we hadn’t been advertising,” stated Glenn. “We were kind of a fresh name there. In the first month that we were with Podium, we started feeding those Google reviews. All of a sudden, we have all these customers who love us giving us reviews on Google. So, it put us in a really great place in a city that we hadn’t really built a name in yet. It pushes people to want to make that phone call to us instead of to another company that’s been there for a lot longer.”
Improving Your Business
With a constant flow of customer feedback, Paul’s Pest Control is able to reinforce their strengths, while pinpointing any weaknesses in the business or negative experiences that may occur from time to time.
“It’s great being able to address concerns immediately because that customer has the opportunity to let us know right away how they’re feeling,” explained Glenn. “If they had a negative experience, we can find out right away instead of finding out too late. They can tell us and we can address it and correct it before it becomes a problem, and before they start sharing it with others. We have the opportunity to make it a good experience right from that Podium feedback.”
Though Paul’s Pest Control signed up with Podium to help improve their online review presence, they have also seen additional benefits through the Messaging Platform.
“I also have customers that will respond through the Messaging Platform after leaving a review and put in a request for other services,” concluded Glenn. “So, it has been a great means of communication, and it’s also an opportunity for me to thank customers for the feedback that they’re leaving for us.”