Merry Maids’ white glove strategy for owning local SEO.

With 32 years experience as a Merry Maids franchise owner, Jason Skillingberg knows the value of keeping his customers happy. He has deployed a number of different programs to collect feedback and ensure his customers are receiving a top-notch experience with his franchises. While Skillingberg’s franchises were doing an excellent job collecting feedback through email surveys, one area that could use some improvement was securing public-facing reviews on sites like Google and Facebook.

“Podium had so much potential for success because the program guided our customers through the process of leaving a review, making it much simpler,” related Skillingberg. “It appeared to be the best online review management tool. Much better than any tool I have seen so far.”

IMPROVED ONLINE REPUTATION

The biggest benefit for the business has been an increase in the number of online reviews and a boost to its online reputation. Since implementing Podium approximately 3 months ago, Skillingberg’s two Merry Maids franchises have collected 38 new online reviews and boast an average overall star rating of 4.3.

While it’s still early in the implementation, Skillingberg anticipates those numbers will only continue to rise. This will, in turn, improve the business’ local SEO standing, further increasing visibility with potential customers searching for cleaning services online.

CENTRALIZED REVIEW MANAGEMENT

The review management dashboard has been the most valuable feature to Skillingberg and his team. Having the ability to see all of his franchises’ reviews in a single location has been very beneficial. Additionally, the invitation tracker has been helpful in prodding the business’ administrative staff to send out invites, ensuring they hit their monthly target for invitations sent and reviews received.

“We are a goal oriented business,” stated Skillingberg, “so setting a goal of how many requests we are going to send to get started every month and breaking that down by the week while expressing the importance of online reviews to our administrative staff has helped us be successful.