Rotmans Furniture makes up for lost time with text messaging.

The Challenge

No one likes to get a negative review, especially when your business is focused on delivering high-quality customer service like Rotmans Furniture. Despite having a vast majority of its customers leaving the store satisfied, Rotmans struggled to garner quality reviews.

That was until David Rotman of Rotmans, started to reach out personally to every individual who had ever left the business a bad review, dating back as far as 2011. David would offer an apology, do what he could to rectify the situation, and when he was sure that they were satisfied, he would ask if they would consider revising their review.

This practice helped Rotmans significantly improve its online reputation and resulted in a 20 percent increase in revenue. However, the process was very time consuming. That’s why Rotman began to seek out a way to automate the review invitation process to help eliminate a lot of the manual work he was putting in. “When I heard about Podium, it almost sounded too good to be true,” Rotman recalled. “Being able to easily text all of our customers with an invitation to leave a review and achieve a high response rate is an online marketer’s dream.”

The Solution

Rotman first came across Podium at a Furniture First Symposium and was impressed by how quickly and easily Podium customers were able to collect reviews. What was most impressive, however, were the results these businesses were able to achieve from such a small investment.

Furniture stores typically have to spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing, and a lot of times it’s just a shot in the dark as to what will work and what won’t. “The cost was so small compared to the possible benefits we could see,” recalled David. “There was really nothing to lose and so much to gain if Podium really was what I thought it was.”

One of the biggest benefits Rotmans has achieved since implementing Podium is just the sheer amount of time they have been able to save. “Podium saved us a lot of time that we used to spend emailing customers and asking them for reviews, which made the number of reviews we collect go way up” related Rotman. “Now instead of getting about five reviews a month, we can get five reviews a day.”

The Result

Rotmans is also utilizing Podium Messenger to stay better connected with its customers, giving the store the ability to respond more quickly to upset customers and build better relationships with the happy ones. Additionally, Rotman is able to more easily monitor reviews and respond when appropriate directly from inside Podium.

On many occasions this has helped turn a bad experience into a positive one. An example that happened recently involved a woman who had ordered a bed, but once it arrived she noticed something wrong with the box spring and felt the mattress was too firm. However, what she was most upset about was the waiting period for the replacement mattress she wanted.

“Once I saw the bad review, I called her up right away,” David stated. “I sent her a reimbursement check for a mattress topper she purchased to make the mattress softer. I also sent a technician out look at the box spring, which we are replacing for her. All of that effort paid off. She was so happy that she changed her one-star review to a five-star. Podium helped us do that. It helps us improve communication with literally each and every customer.”