It’s undeniable that online review sites like Yelp, Google Places and Angie’s List are a great, low-cost way to market your business. When managed correctly, online review sites can bring visibility to your business and reward your hard work and customer service efforts. However, they also have their downsides. For example, it’s all-too-easy for a disgruntled customer to take frustration over an unexpected repair bill out on your business and leave an unwarranted negative review.
With 85% of consumers turning to online review sites, many industry professionals are wondering how to prevent negative online reviews for your HVAC business. Since reputation is so important to the success of an HVAC business, we conducted research in order to find answers to the following questions:
- What causes people to leave negative online reviews for HVAC businesses?
- How do negative Yelp reviews impact home repair businesses?
- What can you do to prevent negative online reviews for your HVAC business?
To answer these questions, we analyzed hundreds of Yelp reviews for HVAC contractors across the United States, and many of our findings were quite surprising. Keep reading to explore the infographic, or click here to access the free whitepaper for the full Yelp study featuring in-depth insights all home repair verticals analyzed – including Plumbers, Electricians and General Contractors – and actionable tips on how your business can increase your visibility on Yelp and harness the power of online review sites to your advantage.
HVAC contractors have more scheduling complaints than any other industry surveyed.
Scheduling problems account for 1 in 3 negative online reviews for HVAC repair businesses. Unfortunately, a whopping 80% of scheduling problems resulted in a lost sale, making it the #1 cause of lost business for HVAC contractors – a massive loss in revenue. In fact, HVAC contractors have more scheduling complaints than any other industry surveyed, with a whopping 30.1% of all scheduling complaints for home repair businesses in the USA belonging to HVAC businesses.
Unfortunately, small businesses and solo contractors lose the most business due to scheduling problems. Unlike large businesses, these small operations typically have less personnel resources to help with scheduling and customer service, lack of scheduling technology, and have an overall tighter schedule.
Fact: 98% of HVAC businesses are hidden by Yelp search options.
Think your business is visible on Yelp? Think again! 98% of HVAC contractors are hidden from search results anytime a Yelp user sorts results by “Highest Rated” or “Most Reviewed”. These frequently-used search options display the top 40 most reviewed HVAC businesses in any given category, or those that have received the highest ratings by Yelp users, obscuring the remainder of businesses from results.
While this may not be a huge issue for HVAC contractors in rural areas, this is a big problem for contractors in large cities, as these commonly-used search options can make it incredibly difficult to be discovered by potential customers. For example, in New York City, only 1% of HVAC contractors are visible. Even smaller big cities are affected. For example, in Atlanta, only 3.9% of HVAC businesses are displayed.
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65.5% of pricing complaints resulted in lost business
One quarter of all negative online reviews for HVAC businesses relate to pricing issues, including large bills and high work estimates. Sadly, confusion over job estimates are a huge loss of business, with 65.5% of these complaints resulting in the prospective customer hiring a competitor. Another 7% of complaints focus specifically on issues relating to written estimates, invoices, billing problems and payment issues. HVAC contractors: it’s time to improve your invoicing system!
A meager 17% of complaints relate to work quality
Interestingly, only 17% of negative online reviews for HVAC companies relate to quality of work. It’s important to note that this percentage would have been much lower had it not included reviews for a few fly-by-night HVAC contractors that sold unsuspecting customers vouchers and used their appointment time to upsell instead of completing the job.
Average Yelp Rating for HVAC businesses: 4.3 Stars
While Yelp star ratings were fairly consistent across all trades, HVAC contractors fell square into the middle with 4.3 stars, as did General Contractors. By comparison, Electricians averaged 4.4 stars while HVAC and Plumbers averaged 4.1 stars.
How To Prevent Negative Online Reviews For Your HVAC Business
There are a few simple change you can make to increase your star rating on Yelp, boost your visibility, and help prevent potential problems before they turn into negative online reviews. We’ve compiled actionable tips and additional insights in our free whitepaper, The Ultimate Guide to Online Reviews. Click here to access the complete (FREE!) guide!
Tip: Guide will be sent via email. If you don’t receive it within a few minutes, be sure to check your spam folder!
