86% of you said you wanted me to just get on here and rant so your wish is my command. Stop treating reviews on your website as a checkbox exercise 80% of solar websites that I come across have a testimonial module that looks like this What is so bad about these review modules? They are hand typed into the website, there is no proof of legitimacy They don't link out to or reference the original source of the review Many don't feature customer names so they are literally untraceable Those that do feature customer names, definitely don't feature of a photo of the customer They almost never link to a project case study so that you can see the work being referred to How on earth do you think you'll compete with this? It is only a matter of time before this is mandatory Accreditations like EVPS have already started requiring the source of a review to be shown clearly alongside the content.

Google reviews are the lifeblood of a local services business Trustpilot are great but nothing quite matches the visibility of Google reviews One of the worst things you can get is a 1 star Google review You should do everything you can to avoid it Or should you…?? Genius intentional 1 star review strategy I've seen a few installers fight back and take control of their negative reviews. You have to be careful with this… Caveats It should only really be attempted by installers that have a STELLAR reputation already. Ideally you'd only do this if you can calculate that the one star review will not impact your overall score, and only really if you're already on 5 star like Chiltern Solar People always automatically sort to see the 1 star reviews first Even if you have hundreds of 5 star reviews, people are going to sort "Worst first" So, why not give them something you want them to read? Get a customer to write a review that says something along the lines of "Honestly their return on investment forecasts are utter crap. I've saved 2x more than they said I would!!! I've now got too much money spare and the wife upgraded her ASDA slippers to Ugg boots, its ridiculous! They installed everything peacefully, didn't disturb me while I worked from home, the system is working perfectly and performing even better than expected. As a brit, I wanted something to complain about. I feel like they robbed me of that experience. 1 star. Tom, Mark and Joe installed a battery storage system for us a few weeks ago. Just had a power cut. Neighbours power all out. We powered the house from the batteries. Now I've got Margret and John in my kitchen, telling me all of their stories about how far they walked to school back in the 50s. Power is still out, I've still got 92% battery capacity and no clue when they're gonna p*ss off. Thanks guys - ruined my Christmas you have. Imagine they see that as your only 1 star review Done deal. Anyone with a sense of humour will immediately make an enquiry and the whole building rapport piece? Already sorted. Let me know if you try this out, I would love to see what impact it could have.