There have been times where clients have called me saying the amount of phone calls they’re receiving is decreasing. They appear in the maps, but they call me saying, “hey, look the phone’s been dead for the last, I don’t know, four, six weeks, something like that, what’s going on?”
I take a look at their listings and their rankings. Everything’s the same, but I have found on two different cases in the last six months that what happened was the client got a negative review or a series of negative reviews, taking them from a high rating to a lower rating. One drop was from a five to a 3.7, simply because they didn’t have many reviews.
Another client dropped from a 4.8 to just a four, losing an entire star. It’s amazing because, in both instances, we can tie the time where their phones stopped ringing, to when they received the review that decreased their rating.
What Can Be Done When You Get A Negative Review?
It’s very important for you to keep getting positive reviews. Even if you do your best, even if there’s nothing else that you can do, you still can get a negative review. A lot of times you can also get negative reviews the opposing party, this is especially prevalent in family law cases. You’ll do a great job for your client, and then their spouse gives you a negative review and screws up your ranking.
What you need to do is get as many five-star reviews as possible. These will protect you from those negative reviews because one negative review can cause a drop in your rating, and have a devastating impact on your phone calls.
I’ve been doing lawyer marketing for six years, and every single time we’ve had a client that didn’t have enough reviews, they went out and got more reviews. For example, we had a bankruptcy law firm in Chicago that didn’t have enough reviews. I told them to get 20 reviews, and they listened to me and got the reviews. The next week was the busiest week their law firm has ever had.
In the end, you’ve got to pay attention to your reviews, especially negative reviews, and work hard to get those positive reviews. Even if you don’t have any negative reviews, you need to have positive reviews to protect yourself in the event you do receive a negative review.