Polishing the online reputation of Australia’s largest car wash provider

The issue

Research shows that customers who have had a bad experience are x2 – x3 more likely to write an angry review than customers who had a great experience are to post a happy review. (www.onlinereputationmanagement.us)

Star Car Wash (Australia’s largest hand car wash provider with over 150 sites nationwide) felt their online reputation – the rating score for many of their sites – did not fairly reflect their service standard.

With most sites located in shopping centres, customers often have armfuls of shopping as they collect their car and just want to be on their way.

By the time the customer gets home, they’ve mentally moved on and at the end of the day a clean car is what they paid for so why go online to say that is what they had received.

The solution

Through Review Juice, Star Car Wash were able to:

Establish an SMS-based Google review request program
Integrated into the POS to time the SMS send exactly 1 hour after the wash was paid for (to allow customers time to get home and unpack)
Set up business rules to avoid sending most frequent customer the request after every wash
Connected over 150 different Google Business Profiles to ensure each customer review populated the right profile page
Save most negative comments from being posted online by guiding customers to contact Star directly for a faster resolution
Establish a repository of responses depending on the rating and review content
Set up weekly reporting

The results

The impact was quick and dramatic.

Within just 4 months the average national rating across all 150 sites had increased from 3.4 to 4, and the volume of reviews received each month had grown +400%.

70% of the new reviews were 5 stars and we could see the impact on online booking sales of up to +80% per site

Sites whose rating did not improve, or in a couple of instances declined, were quickly identified and the management team were able to implement procedures to address service quality issues.

“The Review Juice program helped us laser in on sites that needed more training and assistance to help them deliver the service expected by our customers. This is a continuous program for us now and is just a part of our customer service strategy”.

Allen Chimes, Head of Operations, Star Car Wash Group