Good Monrning Team!
Just had ratemyagent come in to sell us their PM product. I really feel like there are too many review programs at there and its such a shame they don’t all join up.
Is anyone using ratemyagent or planning on doing it down the tract?
We ask for reviews on: - Facebook - Google - NPS
Reviews Google FB & ratemyagent too much?
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Hey Sarah, I have to say… Personally I don’t like the Rate My Agent model much, its about revenue for web realestate so not a true platform. I know some people have great success with it as a model, but personally I don’t like paying to compete on every stage. I say pick one or two, and spend more time and money there than be stretched across all. I welcome an opposing strategy, as i would love to know if I am on the right side of this ?..
Personally I dislike the way that they use your brand and listings to sell other agents realesate that are paying to be on the platform… I know its a push and pull technique, but does not leave a great taste in your mouth… Its like they are forcing you to defend your brand by paying to be on their platform…
I think your right Ashley!
Have you seen that episode of black mirror?
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This is really hard as I agree with you in some ways, @Ash, but I also think we desperately need ways to differentiate and I think we’ll need to be wherever our clients are. It’s my understanding that REA will be getting into tenant and property manager ratings and our clients are definitely there, so think we’ll need to be in front of that one. I was thinking about other industries and whether rating systems and infomediaries were beneficial. It made me think of the hotel industry and the fact that if I search Hilton Surfers Paradise, they’re have trip
advisor, google reviews, wot if, expedia ratings etc and then I came came across this article: (warning, it’s long!): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401216301049
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@ashley.giles ok. My take on it is, why share your hard earned income with computer boffins that created a website (ratemyagent) and then marketed it… the industry is dumb enough to of given them traction.
They sit there, do very little, and take a sizable chunk of agents commissions. What a crock!
Facebook, maybe it’s just me getting old and synical but I feel like it’s oldschool now, people are making a point of deleting it off their phones, personally I’m a bit over it, but I know it still has a place and you’ve still got to have a presence there.
But… THE GOOGLE! This ‘is’ the central place in my view, why the hell people perceive we need all this other crap (ie rate my agent) is beyond me! It’s just noise that pollutes the consumers path to a decision. People love the google, they play with it every day. They use it as a means of finding you (and your rate my agent reviews, and your Facebook page) so why not just get google reviews?
Anyway, like I said, I’m no oracle but it seems pretty simple to me. Get google review or die trying.
Xox
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@cameron I love your stance on this, probably because it is the same as mine 
There are plenty of examples of leads coming into an office based purely on their Google Reviews.
The only thing I have in the back of my mind is being aware of a product like Amazon’s Echo (Alexa) Because Amazon does not communicate with Google, we might find that if Alexa becomes the most popular voice activated search engine in everyone’s homes, it may negate some of our hard work. I feel we should be starting to think about encouraging our raving fans to perhaps use a few different platforms to review us - perhaps not putting all our eggs in one basket.
I also feel really strongly about ensuring you have plenty of tenant reviews, as well as happy owners. I can see that you do have this at Pure Rentals, but I know of an office who has an amazing number of 5 star reviews (over 150), but no tenant comments. Prospective landlords want to know how we treat our tenants and this is a great way to demonstrate our relationships with current tenants. How we handle when they are unhappy, what they say we are good at - all of those things are important. Reviews are a great tool to create some transparency around what we do.
How do you go about encouraging your clients to rate you on Google? Do you have a process that the team follows? Do you provide an incentive for individuals within the team?
@gemmaattlesey I know you guys are really focusing on this across the agency at the moment and have had some good success. What has been the best way to get the team thinking about this for you?
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Google all the way!
Our team have to get a google review monthly to hit their bonus.
They must ask the outgoing TT’s after the bond is finalised.
Also when they get high NPS marks they contact and ask for a google review too
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Haha!! I love that your so honest with this! I agree, it seams every day were getting bombarded with people trying to take a peice of the pie… Love your thoughts on Google, I agree Re: Facebook, and we don’t have Ratmyagent etc here in NZ, and I am happy that is the case!
@cameron Question: Do you incentive your staff based on Google Reviews? What is your stance on this…
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By the way, a 4.8 with 101 reviews is fantastic!! Well done…
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Hey Cam, definitely agree with getting google reviews!
Do you think that it will stay that way though? REA are getting into ratings for agents (have said it’s part of their plans in the medium term) and almost everyone who has an interest in real estate is on there - I think we’ll need to get in front of that one.
The other thing is, we don’t need to give our data over, these things can just scrape our websites and have us listed against our competitors. If the competitor does have ratings on there and we don’t, and if they do have a big budget unlike most of our real estates, I think that puts the small RE at a disadvantage as right under the google review is the site with verified ratings on it. I think people are used to building their own evidence and as long as it’s on the first page, will check through a few things.
I also think that paying 25% or about 1 weeks rent is better than paying $3 times for the management and if you could work it that you wouldn’t need a BDM to sign it up (for eg, having self service sign-up), it’s cheaper than having a BDM on board which I’ve estimated that with bonuses (for our team) costs about $700 per management - not taking into account marketing spend - that’s just salaries/bonuses at the current rate (which I have new BDMs on board - will get better over time).
I don’t think it’s just real estate rating sites, but other trusted ratings sites. I don’t think the public trust real estate agents, so while there may be positive google reviews, there’s no verification process like Trip Advisor for eg, that the google review is even real, and google doesn’t house results - for eg, like some of the sites that are around and starting to market themselves that show how many properties were sold and what they sold at. I think our customers are skeptical enough of us as an industry that they will flock to something well marketed with real verified results and reviews.
We’re currently getting a few leads from local agent finder each week. I also think it depends on your geography - a small town where the businesses are well known, I think, will be able to avoid this for some time, but less so if they rely on interstate investors. I think it also depends on the type of growth you want. We want lots of growth fast and don’t want to pay for rent rolls. This is a cheaper option at the moment. (Could potentially be more expensive in the future if they start then advertising when the lease comes up etc). Who knows? I do think we’re at the start of this and google is ok for now, but I don’t think it will stay that way for long.
Would love your thoughts on all of this.
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I went to a ratemyagent presentation. I went in with an open mind but came out shaking my head. At the time (about 8 weeks ago) the presenter had no pricing for the property management component and worse still he clearly had no idea or understanding on the property management business.
I agree with a lot of the comments a couple of guys trying to make a lot of money at our expense.
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Everyone should watch this episode of black mirror on Netflix! It really gets you thinking about what the future is going to be like with all this review stuff : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)
I just have to share, I’m so proud of our team, they have increased Google Reviews from 3.8 to 4.4 in 6 months!!
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Well done @sarah That is a great achievement. Now you need to share how you did this and what worked best for the team. Was it the increased focus because it forms part of their KPI’s or did you create some amazing system?
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We did a team goal setting event and all got super motivated to increase them!
We put a few processes and triggers in place to make sure we are asking and have a huge goal wall that we add to every time we get a new one. The team said “I found it scary asking at first but when you get used to it its much easier.”
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Massive win @sarah and a huge way that you can prove that your fee is worth what you believe it is! I’ve just done a review of all of Coronis Google, Facebook and Product Review scores/complaints for the past 12 months.
A few things were highlighted out of it:
- Google is by far the most used source with FB second and Product Review a distant third (did check Yelp & Local Agent too but less problems with these).
- For every five 5 Stars we receive, we receive one 1 star. We hardly receive 2,3,4 stars.
- Some people in the business are better at getting updated reviews and/or the review removed than others and this requires seriously training
- Many of our 5 star reviews aren’t being responded to
- The major complaints are:
- Poor communication / how difficult it is to get in touch or a response with a property manager
- The state of the rental property when the tenant moves in & lack of cleanliness … mould gets mentioned a lot & a lot were posted with photos
- Length of time to process maintenance requests
- Bond refunds / disputes
| Client Type | Reviews Received | Total percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant | 87 | 52% |
| Landlord | 25 | 15% |
| Unknown (no review or just say worst experience) | 23 | 14% |
| Buyer | 18 | 11% |
| Seller | 7 | 4% |
| Neighbour | 4 | 2% |
| Contractor | 2 | 1% |
| Interviewee | 1 | 1% |
Interestingly, when I looked at the corresponding NPS scores to the offices/PMS with the star reviews, it was clear that those with less than good NPS scores (<o) also had the highest negative review rate. Those with excellent NPS scores (+50) had less than 2% negative to positive google reviews.
It seems to me that we can put a figure on NPS and our overall reputation score. @terrihandy thought you might be interested in this. 
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Jods this is amazing, how did you get all that info? Did you need to do is manually or is it something you could get a VA to collect?
Totally agree with the highlighted things you found.
Did it manually and absolutely think it could be a VA’s role. You just get them set up to receive the alert on the review site. This is so critical to our success. We had one Landlord who we were about to sign check out Product Review - it is TERRIBLE for us. It’s just not something we were checking and we had 12 negative reviews over the proceeding 12 months (not a lot of reviews but it told a negative story with no positive reviews as we’ve never pushed it). The Landlord sent an SMS to Glen (BDM) and said I’m sorry, but after seeing the reviews, we’re not going to proceed. They had 4 properties. Those negative reviews cost us $20K in asset value and $8k in direct management fee revenue + ancillary revenue. NEVER LETTING THAT HAPPEN AGAIN!!
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