What We Did With a One-Star Review

One of the companies we work with is an estate management company. Someone asked them to come out and quote a fence, and the owner gave a quote almost twice what most fencing companies charge. The person left a one-star review. It did not say the work was bad, because there was no work yet. It complained about the price and told people to shop around.

If that were your business, what would your first reaction be? Most of us want to defend ourselves, or delete it, or pretend it never happened. We saw something else. The reviewer had just handed us the exact question we teach owners to answer.

Why the price was double

He does it differently, and it is not about speed. It is about building a fence that is still standing years from now. So he does the work most crews skip. He puts gravel in every hole, for every post. He does not dig a hole, drop the post in and move on. He does it properly the whole way through, and that takes almost twice as long as the average fence company that is in and out quickly.

A buyer comparing two quotes cannot see any of that. They see a number, and one number is double the other. Nobody had told them what the extra money was paying for.

What we did with the review

“Shop around” is an invitation to compare, and a comparison is only fair if people know what they are comparing. One of the lessons on this site is about exactly that: what makes you different. The reviewer teed it up for us. He told everyone to compare prices, so we showed them what the price was made of.

We used the one-star review to show the difference between what this owner actually does and what the average fence company does. The gravel in every hole, the time it takes, and why it matters over the years. We explained the price instead of arguing about it.

We replied publicly and explained why the price was different. The review was still there, but now anyone reading it could also see why shopping around would not give them the same fence.

He did not get that job. But he has gotten other jobs because of that reply, from people who read the review, saw the answer and understood what they were paying for.

The idea underneath it

A bad review is two things at once. It is one person’s opinion, and it is also an audience. Everyone else who is deciding whether to hire you reads how you answer it, usually before they read anything else about you.

That is the distinction. You can reply to the reviewer, or you can reply to the people reading. Arguing with the first rarely works. Showing the second what you do and why it matters often does. And a price complaint is the easiest place to start, because the reader is already asking what the difference is.

This also applies to your pricing. If you charge more because you do the work better, it is your job to show the work. Customers cannot give you credit for what they cannot see. We cover this in Reviews and Reputation: How to Get Them and What to Do With Bad Ones, and in Competitive Positioning: Why Someone Should Choose You.

So this week, read your own lowest review. What was the customer really asking? And is there anything in your business that you do better than the competition and never say out loud?