Customer feedback and online reviews are the backbone of growth for home improvement companies. 

Whether it’s a plumbing repair, a full-scale renovation, or a roofing project, homeowners rely on trust before letting a professional into their homes. 

That’s why we ran a survey to better understand how companies in construction, remodeling, plumbing, electrical services, and related fields collect and use feedback.

We received 18 insightful quotes from home improvement companies across the world. This article is a summary of the quotes and a discussion of the best feedback and review practices.

The answers show a clear pattern: reviews are not just about reputation—they drive operations, marketing, and even team culture.

Why Feedback Matters: Trust, Proof, and Growth

Survey participants repeatedly emphasized that reviews go beyond being “nice to have.”

In fact, reviews and feedback are considered one of the most important marketing and business development tools.

Word of mouth online

Word of mouth has always been one of the most important growth factors for home improvement companies.

Friends, family, and neighbors share their renovation experiences with each other. Good or bad, your reputation travels fast.

Reviews are today’s version of neighborhood referrals. Online reputation can spread even faster and wider than personal recommendations.

Exceed Plumbing noted that one review alone brought in three new clients, showing how feedback amplifies word-of-mouth:

“I remember a particular case where a winter night without hot water was the concern of a client. We had it all sorted within two hours. One of those clients wrote a review. One review alone brought three clients in their area.”

Caleb John, Owner, Exceed Plumbing

Trust and proof

A business that doesn’t have any reviews has zero online trust and social proof. 

Some small businesses can survive without an online presence and reputation, but if you desire to grow and win your competition, online reviews are a way to say: we are here, and we are trustworthy.

Customers often make decisions based on a single Google review page. Even contractors themselves act the same way. A contractor insurance company ContractorBond said reviews are “frontline proof, not optional content.”:

“We do not have the luxury of waiting for trust to build. Contractors check you out once. If your reviews are weak, they leave. So we treat reviews like frontline proof, not optional content. Our reviews need to say, “These people get your paperwork done right and on time.” That is it.”
– Michael Benoit, Owner, ContractorBond

Proof is much more effective when it comes from a previous customer and not the company itself. That’s why your marketing efforts – how amazing they might be – will never beat another customer’s experience in building trust.

“A five-star rating with a specific comment about our team's tidiness, for example, carries more weight than any of our own marketing claims."

– Adam Buschell, Director and Electrician, AB Electrical & Communications

Drive leads and visibility

The results driven by reviews can be measured. They increase website conversion rates and increase visibility in search results.

For Bear Brothers Cleaning, 5-star reviews directly correlated with a jump in Google Business Profile interactions—from zero to over 200 per month.

“With my cleaning company, we've seen a major correlation between increasing reviews and increasing Google Business Profile interactions and leads. Reviews are effectively backlinks for your Google Business Profile; the more you have (that are good), the higher you will rank. We've gone from no interactions a month a year ago to 210 interactions in June 2025, mainly from earning 5-star reviews.” 
– Forrest Webber, Owner, Bear Brothers Cleaning

If you are interested in the ROI of reviews, you can test our handy review ROI calculator.

Influence improvements

Feedback and reviews help you make data-driven decisions on how to improve customer experience.

A better customer experience ultimately leads to more revenue, as the example below from Custom Container Living demonstrates:

“We analyze feedback weekly during our management meetings. Just last month, based on customer input, we added a virtual reality walkthrough option for clients who can't visit our showroom in person. This has already improved our out-of-state sales process.”

Robert Wagoner, President & Founder, Custom Container Living

Boost team morale

Taking ownership of customer experience and listening to customer feedback is important to the whole organization.

Great feedback from customers feels good and boosts morale – it’s always nice to hear that your hard work is appreciated!

On the other hand, hearing criticism from customers can also help your staff understand why certain things are done.

Let’s take cleaning after a job as an example. When it’s not just “orders from above”, but actually something that adds value for the customer, your workers might be more inclined and motivated to get it done.

“We foster a culture where everyone in the company knows the importance of listening to our customers. This collective responsibility ensures that feedback is not only collected but actively utilized to shape our strategy and operations.”
– Josh Qian, COO and Co-Founder, Best Online Cabinets

Different Methods of Collecting Feedback

Different companies use different methods to gather reviews:

  • Post-job follow-ups: Many respondents send short surveys or direct links to Google Reviews immediately after the job. Timing is critical—asking too late reduces response rates.
  • Tools and automation: Some use software tools to send automated review requests, surveys, or track satisfaction scores. This helps with the right timing.
  • Personal touch: Others rely on direct phone calls and manual follow-ups to keep it personal and ensure authentic feedback. This approach requires more manual and administrative labour.
  • Feedback frameworks: Net Promoter Score is an important metric to many companies, while others rely on ratings on Google Maps. Facebook also came up as one of the most used platforms for reviews and recommendations.

Some businesses go creative. Here's how Weather Solve collects feedback and reviews:

“After every install, we ask site supervisors to share three things they liked and three they would change. Not through forms. Through direct messages. Those logs then get tagged by operations.”

"We do pull reviews, but we do it sideways. We ask if we can record their final walk-through comments, and then we extract a testimonial. We do not write the script, they do, with their tone and concerns. That is what makes it believable when others read it."

Barbara Robinson, Marketing Manager, Weather Solve

Which Is Better: Reaching out Personally or Sending out Surveys?

Many home improvement companies opt for collecting feedback personally. 

It can ensure higher response rates – as you practically force customers to say something. The feedback can be rushed and not well thought out.

It is more likely for customers to be overly nice when talking to you personally, and you could miss out on some valuable feedback.

When you use a third-party tool, customers might be more truthful in their commentary, as they are not afraid of hurting your feelings.

Another problem is: how do you record the feedback and the permission to use it?

Most of the time, the feedback you ask for face-to-face goes unrecorded. It is difficult to compare it with other customers’ feedback or track the customer experience over time.

In short: you lack feedback data that could be accumulated over time and used to improve your business.

Also, you don’t have a recorded permission and consent to use these comments in marketing.

With modern feedback and review collection tools, these situations can be avoided.

Modern home improvement companies, especially ones with more staff and yearly clients, record their feedback in CRM or ERP systems, and analyze it with advanced insights tools.

Turning Reviews Into Marketing Power

Once reviews are collected, home improvement companies waste no time putting them to work:

  • Featuring reviews on websites and in social media campaigns.
  • Using customer quotes in sales proposals.
  • Building credibility with ad campaigns that highlight satisfaction stats—Elite Maids NY advertises “92% of clients say we outperform their previous cleaner.”
  • Creating case studies or video testimonials to showcase bigger projects.

The message is clear: reviews are one of the strongest marketing tools available—and often outperform traditional ads.

However, based on the responses, there seem to be many things home improvement companies could improve.

For example, they could segment their reviews and showcase them in the right places. The more relevant a review is, the more powerful its social proof effect.

Challenges: Timing, Fatigue, and Reluctance

Even though reviews are vital, getting them isn’t easy. Respondents highlighted:

  • Customer busyness: Once the job is done, clients often move on quickly.
  • Review fatigue: People are bombarded with requests from many businesses and may ignore yet another one.
  • Platform barriers: Some customers don’t want to create Google accounts or have their names displayed publicly.
  • Cultural hesitations: In some contexts, people avoid leaving negative feedback out of courtesy or caution.

Who Owns Feedback?

Feedback and reviews can be an entity where responsibility is not very clear, or it is divided between different functions.

In our sample, the practices around feedback ownership differ.

Many times, the owner personally manages reviews.

“Currently I do all the reviews and feedback myself. This helps me have perspective on our strengths and our weaknesses. If there is a pattern, for example, arrival times or lack of clarity in invoices, I address it immediately with the team. It maintains perspective and allows one to make intelligent choices.”
– Caleb John, Director, Exceed Plumbing

Larger firms often divide responsibilities: customer service collects, operations analyzes, and marketing amplifies.

“At Service First Plumbing, everyone shares the responsibility of customer experience. We conduct ongoing customer feedback via online reviews, conversations and surveys. It’s not just receiving positive reviews, but being responsive to all reviews; both positive and negative. We support our customers posting their views on Google and Yelp, where we can interact directly. We also review the reviews collectively to identify themes and opportunities for improvement.”
– Steven Bahbah, Managing Director, Service First Plumbing

Some companies might even make feedback ownership very concrete by rewarding workers for high customer satisfaction:

“Every team member can access real-time client comments through alerts on Slack because quality is everyone’s KPI. Staff bonuses are directly linked to satisfaction scores.”
– Iryna Balaban, CEO and Co-Founder, Elite Maids NY

Who Does the Dirty Work?

Customer experience and satisfaction require everyone’s input, but in the end, who is in charge of doing the concrete work?

In many cases, when something is everyone’s responsibility, it ends up being no one’s responsibility. 

How do you align the different functions in a way that supports effective feedback management, collection, and showcasing? Who is accountable for making sure the process works?

One solution is to automate the process. This way, you can be sure that feedback is collected in the background, consolidated into one place for analysis, and used effectively.

You and your team can focus on the most important thing: using the information to improve your daily operations. 

Key Takeaways for Home Improvement Companies

  1. Ask at the right moment. The best time is right after the job when the experience is fresh.
  2. Make it frictionless. One-click surveys, direct links, or SMS reminders work better than long forms.
  3. Show reviews everywhere. Website, social media, ads, sales proposals—reviews should be the first proof point.
  4. Close the loop. Don’t just collect reviews; act on them. Several companies changed communication, checklists, or processes directly based on feedback trends.
  5. Involve the whole team. When everyone sees feedback, from management to installers, it becomes a driver of improvement—not just a marketing metric.
  6. Automate. Make feedback and reviews everyone’s responsibility, but no one’s burden, by removing the manual labor around feedback.

Final Thoughts

In industries like construction, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, or roofing, trust is the currency of growth. Reviews and feedback are not only shaping how customers choose providers but also how companies operate internally. 

Would you like to improve feedback and review processes in your own home improvement company?

Book a demo with us, and we’ll show you how you can automate the whole shebang.