Forget trucks and storage facilities. Your moving company’s reputation is the most important asset you have.

In a digital age where 92% of consumers consult product reviews before buying, modern movers can’t afford to overlook their reputations.

But moving company customers aren’t just looking for quality reviews. They need quantity. According to a 2019 report by Salsify, buyers from the ages of 24-44 expect an average of 150 reviews for a business when comparing products and services online.

In this complete guide to reputation management for moving companies, we’ll share the latest strategies, tools, and best practices for maintaining a sparkling 5-star reputation.

Reputation management is a strategic approach to influencing and controlling how your moving company is perceived by the public. This involves monitoring and responding to customer feedback, managing online reviews, and utilizing social media platforms to build a positive image.

But strong reputation management isn't just about addressing negative feedback. It's also about highlighting positive experiences so potential customers can see your company in the best light.

According to data from Moving.org, 55% of survey respondents felt scammed by their moving company. For those that successfully buck this trend, you can achieve an 18% uplift in sales and huge improvements in lead quality through the power of positive customer reviews.

"When you build relationships, the price isn't usually a big deal. Your booking are a lot of times twice as high when it comes from a trusted referral source or a repeat customer than just a random marketing source," says Wade Swikle, CEO of 2 College Brothers in a recent episode of the Grow Your Moving Company Podcast.

By actively managing your reputation, you can build credibility, make it easier to attract new customers, and boost your overall lead quality.

But a strong reputation management strategy is multi-pronged. It involves a combination of proactive steps, like encouraging happy customers to leave positive reviews, and reactive measures, such as addressing complaints quickly and professionally.

To make it easy to get your reputation management strategy off the ground, we’ve boiled it down to six key steps.

1. Define your KPIs

You’ve heard it before, but we’ll say it again: you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Well-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) will help guide your reputation management efforts and evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy over time. But where do you start?

Here are some of the top reputation management KPIs for movers:

• Review rating goal
• # of weekly reviews
• % of customers giving positive reviews
• # of positive reviews / crew member
• % of reviews with photos
• # of total reviews
• % of reviews that mention crew by name
• speed to respond to a new review
• % that would recommend (for Facebook)

⚡Pro tip: Use these stats publicly to market your business. For example, Wade promotes his glowing Google Business rep front and center on the 2 College Brothers home page with a link taking visitors straight to the reviews:

With 1650+ positive reviews on Google, our trusted crew is fully trained and background-checked, ready to turn your next move into “the smartest move you’ll ever make™.” 

3. Get found in local directories and business listings

Whether a potential customer first encounters your business via a local search on Google, Facebook or Yelp, you need to make sure you’re presenting the same professional image across all sites.

For local businesses like moving companies, the best place to start is without a doubt your Google Business Profile.

• Keep an overall review rating above 4.0
• Get 150+ reviews
• Ask reviewers to include photos in their reviews
• Make sure you have new reviews every month
• Ask reviewers mention crew members by name to build credibility
• Respond to every review, good or bad

Once you’ve fully optimized your Google, Facebook and Yelp listings, consider adding your business to the following sites for an extra boost in visibility:

• Angi
• Thumbtack
• HomeAdvisor
• Better Business Bureau (BBB)
• Consumer Affairs
• Trustpilot

⚡Pro tip: Google profiles with photos receive an average of 35% more clicks. To boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and capture customer attention quicker, try adding a few images to your listings. Team photos or pictures of your branded trucks are both great places to start.

4. Request reviews

Getting more reviews is where the rubber meets the road in online reputation management. But not all reviews are created equal. 

As a general rule of thumb, you want to make sure you have:

• Recent reviews: Google’s algorithms prioritize new reviews over older ones
• A minimum of 150 reviews: One review can increase conversions by 10%, once you exceed 100 reviews, the conversion rate can reach up to 37%
• Reviews with photos: For Google, Yelp, and Facebook

For quality reviews with every satisfied customer, make sure you:

• Have your crew snap a photo and ask for a review immediately after the move
• Add QR Codes on the back of your crew’s tablets
• Put QR Codes on your crew’s t-shirts
• Hand out Pop Cards for fast one-tap reviews

⚡Pro tip: If you’re already using an all-in-one system like SmartMoving, you can make asking for a review a seamless part of the process after a job is done.

By using automated review requests and a seamless tip menu, the team at Local Muscle Movers has  increased reviews 3X+, from 80 reviews to over 250. Not only that, their crew is generating $4-5K in tips every month.

"Streamlined customer intake info, keeping communications in one place, adding photos to jobs... We've now refined the entire process from A to Z." — Jake Holz, President at Local Muscle Movers.

5. Monitor reviews

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. And with 66% of consumers expecting a response within minutes, you can’t afford to miss any incoming reviews.

The good news is, you don’t have to chain yourself to your laptop to make sure each new review gets the response it deserves.

Here are some tips to help you and your team stay on top of incoming reviews:

• Utilize review management tools: Look for tools that let you monitor reviews across multiple sites in one place, paying special attention to those that focus on Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook. The right tool can send you real-time notifications whenever a new review is posted. Some even use AI to summarize the sentiment of hundreds of reviews in a single click.
• Set up Google Alerts: This is a simple, free way to get notified immediately whenever your company name is mentioned online. You’ll receive an email alert straight to your inbox anytime new content, including reviews, is published.
• Manually check major review sites: In an automated world, there’s value in taking the time to get a more comprehensive view of what customers are saying about your business. For Google, Yelp and Facebook, take time out to really read and reflect on your reviews.
• Analyze review trends: By taking the time to analyze your reviews, you can identify common themes or recurring issues to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Founder & CEO of Moving Mastery, Louis Massaro, is a big believer in the power of getting out in front of any negative reviews. The way he sees it, setting up the right monitoring system is job #1.

“First thing you need to do is set up review notifications on all review sources, whether that’s Yelp, Google, or any other place where a customer can leave a review,” he explains. “You need to make sure you get notifications to your email immediately when it happens, so that it doesn’t linger out there where you’re unaware of it.”

⚡Pro tip: Manually monitor your review sites at least once per week to make sure you’ve captured and responded to all feedback.

6. Respond to reviews

You know you need to respond to each and every review that comes in. But when you’re busy with a thousand other tasks, that’s easier said than done.

To make the process as quick and painless as possible, make sure you and your team are clear on the latest best practices for responding to both positive and negative reviews.

Positive reviews

• Respond publicly
• Ideal response time: 24-48 hours
• Mention the reviewer by name
• Make it as personalized as possible
• Thank them
• Response should be 1-2 sentences long

Negative reviews

• Respond privately
• Ideal response time: ASAP (no more than 24 hours)
• Apologize, discuss the issue, offer a solution
• Try to get the reviewer to update or remove their review
• If you can’t get the review changed, get recent reviews that include photos to help push the negative review down
• Negative feedback is never fun, but it is part of the game. The key is to handle negative reviews the same way you’d handle negative feedback face-to-face — with grace, patience and the utmost professionalism.

“If you get a negative review, work with the customer to resolve their issue and make them happy… then ask them to modify or remove the review,” advises Louis.

⚡Pro tip: Already a SmartMoving user? Use the Review Funnel to create automated steps for collecting customer reviews. If a customer rates 4 or 5 stars, they’ll be sent straight to your review platform of choice. If it’s 3 stars or lower, a ticket will automatically be created for your customer support team to reach out.

7. Promote reviews

Last but in no way least, take advantage of the free advertising that comes with a positive customer experience by promoting your reviews across multiple digital marketing channels.

Here are just a few places where you can promote your positive reviews:

• Company website
• Social media
• Ads
• Landing pages
• Marketing campaigns
• Newsletters
• Email signatures

78% more people trust reviews versus ads. By adding positive testimonials to your website, ad campaigns, newsletters and more, you can instantly boost your chances of conversion and get more ROI out of your marketing strategies.

⚡Pro tip: Don’t be afraid to ask for reviews on social media. Start by sharing your existing success stories, including testimonials and positive feedback from past customers on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

There’s a lot that goes into a strong reputation management strategy. But with the right tools, maintaining a positive online presence doesn’t have to eat up hours of your time.

Here are some of the top reputation management features to look for:

• Centralized review management: None of your team members should be wasting their time logging in and out of multiple listing sites, social media channels, and Google accounts. Find a tool that lets you do it all from one central location.
• Real-time notifications: Get alerted for new reviews so you and your team can follow up as quickly as possible to keep customers satisfied. The ability to create a customized auto-response is a major bonus.
• AI-powered replies: AI is now a given in many platforms. Look for tools with well developed chatbots and AI assistants for help with drafting replies and personalizing your templates.

Note that many of the popular reputation management tools are not industry specific. Always check to make sure they integrate with the top sites and platforms for movers.

Checklist to help you choose

Every day, there are new online reputation management tools in the market — each with its own advantages and limitations. 

Here’s a quick checklist to refer back to while choosing your online reputation management (ORM) tools: 

• The tool you choose must be easy to use and require minimal training for your staff. The easier the onboarding process, the faster you can get to work. 
• Look for integration with your CRM, social media platforms, and review sites. Features like review generation, monitoring, and social listening can only work if the ORM tool can integrate with these platforms. 
• How easy is it to restrict user access to different designations in your business? You must be able to share edit access to a few, while the others can only access the reports. Reputation management handles sensitive information that needs restricted access. 
• Robust reporting and detailed data to help you understand customer sentiment. Ensure that the ORM tool you choose generates reports across channels and helps you break down data by sentiment (positive and negative). 
• Businesses need online reputation management tools that can grow with them. Look for scalable solutions that can accommodate enterprise (large-scale multi-location businesses) requirements. 
• Reputation management processes need a quick reaction. Work with ORM tools that send you alerts and periodic summaries on the device of your choice.
• Multi-location review generation, management, and monitoring features with built-in AI capabilities. AI can help you uncover trends, respond to customers instantly, and track branded keywords at scale across multiple channels.

A strong online reputation is critical to the success of your moving business, but you have better things to do than spend hours sifting through reviews.

As the all-in-one platform purpose-built for moving profitability, SmartMoving streamlines sales, crew management, accounting, payments, reporting — and online reputation management.

We’ve built a complete suite of features to make it easy to maximize your reach, build a stellar reputation, and engage with customers all from a single efficient hub: SmartMoving’s Online Reputation Management.

The Online Reputation Management (ORM) suite inside SmartMoving includes three key tools for elevating your ranking and review strategy.

1. Listings Management

For customers and search engines to trust you, your company’s Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) must be consistent across all platforms, directories, and social media channels. With SmartMoving’s Listings Management, we make it simple to correct your information and keep your business listings in sync.

• Centralize your business listings in one dashboard and stop wrangling multiple logins
• Get real-time alerts to errors and inconsistent information across sites
• Update company details across all listings in one click from your ventral business profile
• Drive more leads with done-for-you SEO-optimized images, "get an estimate" links, and more
• Manage all details, including phone numbers, addresses, hours, and services offered

2. Review Management

With the ability to manage reviews across multiple platforms in one location, you and your team can increase your positive review count, automate public and internal reviews like post-move surveys, and even create quick replies with help from SmartMoving’s AI-powered assistant.

• Manage post-move surveys and public reviews like Google and Facebook from one dashboard
• Use auto-response rules and personalized templates to stay on top of customer feedback
• Draft professional replies with the help of the AI-Response assistant
• Automatically send a request for review to your most satisfied customers
• Use the customer sentiment analysis to summarize your reviews

When you use Review Management alongside the rest of SmartMoving, you can:

• Associate reviews with specific crews to reward top teams and pinpoint areas of improvement
• Automatically generate customer service tickets for low-rating reviews to ensure prompt follow-up
• Link reviews to your opportunities in SmartMoving to see all the account information and craft the perfect reply

3. Social Media Management

No more juggling multiple platforms. SmartMoving’s Online Reputation Management suite streamlines the complete A to Z of social media management with one platform to help you create, schedule, and publish content across all your accounts.

• Connect your Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), and Google to manage everything in one place 
• Create a single post and publish it across all platforms in one click
• Batch and schedule posts to publish automatically at the time that works best for your audience
• Use the AI writing assistant to generate ideas and draft social posts for easy, consistent publishing

Build a reputation you can grow on

Ever heard the old saying about the tree and the shadow?  If your character is the tree, your reputation is its shadow. And you can’t have one without the other.

Reputation management helps bridge the gap between the real value you bring as a business and the “shadow” it casts on your community.

So, is your business as solid as oak? With a clear plan, process, and the right tools to help you execute, you can grow your positive customer reviews and generate more business for your moving company.

Grow your moving business, your way. Join SmartMoving's waitlist to be the first to try our newest reputation management features. 

To recap, let’s review the top frequently asked questions (FAQs) movers have when thinking about their brand reputation.

Why is online reputation important for moving company owners?

Moving homes usually marks a major milestone in an individual’s life. It involves personal items and sensitive situations. People want to know that they can trust their movers, especially in an industry that sometimes has a bad reputation. 

A strong online reputation builds trust. It shows potential customers that you’re professional, reliable, and that you actually care. Positive reviews can also help you attract new customers online and create a sense of pride and motivation within your crew.

How can social media influence the reputation of a moving company?

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to showcase your moving services, share customer testimonials, and engage directly with your audience. On the other hand, these platforms also open up avenues for negative feedback and complaints.

To ensure a positive reputation on social media, encourage customers to share their positive moving experiences and use monitoring tools to help you respond to negative feedback quickly.

What tools can moving companies use for reputation management?

Semrush, Birdeye, Podium, Reviewshake, TalkbackAI and ReviewWriter are just a few examples of reputation management tools and software movers can use to streamline, monitor and manage their online presence and reviews.

How often should I monitor reviews?

Aim to respond to reviews as quickly as possible and no longer than 24 hours from the original time of the review. Monitor reviews weekly to make sure you and your team are consistently responsive.

How can I promote my reviews?

Promote your reviews on your website, social media, ads, landing pages, marketing campaigns, newsletters, and email signatures to present a consistent and reliable reputation at every customer touchpoint.