Andrew Stickel

The question:

Hi Andrew, which virtual receptionist would you recommend – Smith.ai or RubyReceptionist? Thanks.

My answer:

I have actually not used either of those companies. I’ve heard a lot of people recommend both of them. I’ve heard that RubyReceptionist is very expensive, I’ve also seen their ads. That’s what I know about them, to be totally honest with you. But I’ve heard that both companies do good work.

Two Companies We Have Used

There are two companies that we have used that I have no affiliation with. I have no loyalty to them. They’re just the ones that we’ve worked with and that we’ve gotten good results with.

They are VoiceNation and AnswerFirst, and we’ve had good luck with them. They’re definitely not the only ones out there, but they’re ones that we have worked with.

About a week ago, my wife called me and said, hey, we need a water softener because her skin is very dry. I went to Google, and I found a lot of different companies. And here we are, one week later, and the water softener is being installed right now.

The Process Of Making A Buying Decision

This is a $7,000 product, and I wanted to document how I made my buying decision. The reason that I’m filming this video is that I want to show you how people think when they’re faced with a decision where they’re going to spend a lot of money.

They’re not exactly sure who to turn to, so they’re just going to Google. They don’t know one company from another. I ended up going with Culligan, but Culligan was not my first choice. But, I want to show you the actual search results that led me to have Culligan install my water softener.

The Google Search Process

When I first did my search, I did a search for water softener. Because I’m located in Lakeland, this brought up companies that were close to me.

The first page results included Atlantic Filter of Polk County. They had 60 reviews and 3.1 stars. They were not going to get a phone call from me, not for a product that’s expensive. I kind of had an idea of how much it was going to be, but I didn’t know it exactly. But, 3.1 is automatically a disqualifier.

Reviews Make A Big Difference

The second one I checked out was a Kinetico. These guys looked pretty good. I saw they have 4.6 stars based on 25 reviews. I started reading their reviews, and I scrolled down, and then something else caught my eye…

How I Found The Winner

I looked at a company in Tampa with 284 reviews. Now, these guys are not on the first page of Google, but they’ve got 284 reviews, and that made me click over to them. I started looking at their reviews, I read the reviews, I called them, and they got the purchase.

By the way, I did this completely organically. I wasn’t trying to film a video. I wasn’t even really thinking about any of this. Basically, this is just the natural progression of how my search went.

The Highest Number Of Good Reviews Wins

What happened was that my almost $7,000 worth of business went to a company that was not on the first page of Google when I searched for a water softener. It also was not the closest one to me. In fact, I was actually looking at another one, and the only thing that changed my decision was that they had 284 reviews versus the 25 reviews of the other company.

I didn’t know who Kinetico was, I’ve heard of Culligan, but I don’t really know anything about them. It could have been the other way round, but it was the number of good reviews that made the difference.
The lesson for lawyers…

This is why I tell lawyers all the time.., you’ve got to get not only a lot of reviews, but you’ve got to get the most reviews in your market. This is so important because people when they don’t know who you are, will go with the most amount of good reviews.

If they knew who you were, they would search for you by name, but they don’t know who you are. What they do is they search for a personal injury lawyer, estate planning attorney, bankruptcy attorney, or DUI lawyer, and then, they look at what other people have to say.

How To Win More Business As A Lawyer

The lawyers that have the highest number of good reviews typically will get the phone call even in a situation where they’re not number one. They’ll get the call even when they’re not on the first page, and you are. There’s a good chance that they are going to get phone calls. Just keep that in mind.

I just wanted to show you that this is what happened when I was searching for a service, and I figured it was an excellent example to show how reviews are a pivotal part in today’s marketing world.

Here’s a quick tip about how to increase your conversion optimization. In fact, you’re probably indirectly increasing your actual rankings as well.

When more people engage with your Google listing, then what ends up happening is that your rankings increase as well, because that’s how Google and RankBrain work.

Why You Should Reply To Your Reviews

You may put a lot of time and effort into getting reviews. But, what I’ve noticed is that a lot of lawyers don’t reply to the reviews to say thank you for leaving a high-quality review. So, I’m going to show you real quick how to do that.

How To Properly Reply To Your Reviews

You can access all of your reviews on one screen, and reply to them all at once. First, go to google.com/places. Once you’re there, click on the listing, i.e., the name, and then on the left side, you’re going to see “reviews.”

All you have to do is click on “reviews.” Now, you’ll see all your reviews, and there’s even “replied” and “haven’t replied.” You can even sort by that.

Then, all you have to do is click reply, type your reply, and then hit reply. You can even go down the entire list and knock out all of your replies to your reviews. It would be even better if you can write one or two sentences in reply to each review.

A Bonus Benefit To Reply To Reviews

This practice also protects you from getting reviews filtered by Google. It doesn’t happen very often, and it’s not as bad as on Yelp.

But, every once in a while, Google will filter reviews that it doesn’t think are legitimate. We have found that when you reply to reviews, there’s less of a chance of them getting filtered.