For years, many real estate agents wanted some kind of system that let their clients give them a public "thumbs up!" job well done remarks. Oh sure, we all asked for customer testimonials and put them up on our websites and included in them in our "look how good I am" presentation books, but agents wanted something more.
Well, for good or bad, we now have a public online "rate your agent" system in place. While we've had things like Google Profile and Business Listing where people could rate the 'business' (that's us), Zillow was the first to implement a true "rate the agent" system. If there was only one system, it may be useful, but it wasn't long before other real estate websites wanted to play as well. Now, we have rating systems in place on Zillow.com, Homes.com, Trulia, and countless other sites that use our data to sell their wares back to us (but that's another post).
So, now that we've let this beast out of the bag, how do you use it?
Do you pick one and ask your clients to rate you only there? Do you ask them to rate you at every one? If so, how many of them are going to bother to that? What happens if you're a "5 star" agent on Zillow but a 1 star on Homes.com? 20 reviews on Trulia but none on Zillow. My heads spinning just thinking about it. What is my client going to do when I ask them to "please rate me on the following 20 sites."
Hey and that's only if you're trying to be honest and upfront with the ratings system.
Zillow has by far the best system in place. They at least give a good attempt at creating a "true" valuation of the agent, preventing agents (or any email that appears to be an agent) from writing reviews. Still, it's easily manipulated. Let's forget about the "dishonest" ways that it's possible to game the system. It's as simple as only asking the clients you know are going to rate you well to give you a review and the system becomes flawed.
The other sites don't try so hard at policing their review systems. Look over a few of them and you'll see agents within the same office rating each other as "excellent" "would use again" My only surprise here is if the agents can give each other positive feedback that we haven't gotten as many negative feedbacks from the competition. Of course, these other sites often give the ability to delete in negative reviews as well. Again, making the system flawed at best.
So what's your poison? Do you ask clients to rate you on these sites? If so, which one or ones do you use?
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