Responding to Customer Reviews

When looking for a repair shop, reviews play an important role. Statistics show potential customers choose businesses with recent reviews, and those reviews help them decide whether to do repairs with shops like yours.

Who Gets a Survey

After a repair, the customers meeting the following criteria have the opportunity to review their experience with you. After reviews are verified, they are published on your shop profile, where you have the ability to post responses.

Customers with a valid email address
Invoice amount is greater than $15
Repairs performed between 5 - 30 days prior to survey delivery
More than 30 days has passed since their previous visit
Customer has not previously provided a review for this shop
Has not opted-out of receiving emails
Non businesses or fleet accounts

How Customers Review Their Experience

Surveys contain two sections - one section that contains questions, and one section where they write in comments.

Survey Questions

Customers provide rated feedback on important aspects of their experience, which are factored into your overall star rating. Your overall rating appears on your shop listing and is key in attracting potential customers. The specific questions on the survey are:

How likely is it that you would recommend this shop to a friend or colleague? (0-10): Customers rate their loyalty to your shop and likelihood of referring others (or damaging your brand).
Quality of the work performed? (1-5) Customers rate their perception of the quality of work performed.
The price you paid? (1-5): Customers rate their invoice on their perception of whether your pricing was a fair reflection of your services.
Was your car ready when promised? (Yes/No): Communicate clearly, promptly, and often and set realistic expectations.
Did you feel pressured into repairs that were not needed? (Yes/No) Provide customers with a list of upcoming repairs as a courtesy. They'll come back if they had a good experience.
Was the work performed on your car explained sufficiently? (Yes/No): Clear, proactive communication is critical to ensuring customer's repair needs are met.
Was your car fixed correctly the first time? (Yes/No) Correcting the issue accurately is critical in preventing the customer from spending more money on the same problem.
Does this shop treat you with respect? (Yes/No) Being polite and kind is important especially if a problem arises. Customers will take into account how you respond.

Written Comments

In addition to the questions, customers use the written comment area to highlight whatever they loved (or didn’t love) about their experience.

Responding to Reviews

Don't think you just need to reply to negative reviews. Responding to positive and negative reviews is an important way to both create returning customers and attract new ones.

Positive Reviews

RepairPal customers posting positive reviews generally have wonderful things to say about their experiences, which potential customers love to read about. We recommend responding to them with specific and unique messaging (as opposed to simply saying "Thank you for your business”). This will let them know that the experience was just as rememberable to you and will help create a repeat customer.

Negative Reviews

It can be frustrating to receive a negative review, but customers can offer perspectives that you might not have considered. This can be an opportunity to shine.

It's important to write a polite reply, and if your shop has areas for improvement, make them. The more positive reviews you get, the more the bad reviews will be drowned out.

For details on handling negative reviews, see this article.

Public Replies

To respond to reviews, in your Shop Dashboard header:

1: Click Reviews. You'll see all of your verified customer reviews collected by RepairPal
2: Respond to your reviews by clicking Reply next to each review