Is your community's online reviews profile helping or hurting your ability to attract and convert new customers? How well are you responding to online reviews? 

Consider this scenario (while illustrative, still common in real-life too): 

"Best Assisted Living has been such a blessing. Dad hasn't been this active and happy in years", said Mary. This glowing word-of-mouth recommendation came at a crucial time for Susan, who was in the process of looking for the perfect community for her mother.

Later that evening, Susan went to her laptop to explore The community further. She imagined her mom participating in community activities, making new friends, and enjoying her days in a caring environment. However, as Susan began to sift through the online reviews, her optimism waned. Amid a healthy amount of positive feedback, she couldn't help but notice several less-than-stellar reviews. Critiques on meal quality, staff responsiveness, and community maintenance peeked through.

But what truly gave Susan pause was not the existence of these criticisms; it was the silence that followed them. No replies, no reassurances, no signs of proactive engagement from The community's team. This lack of response stood in stark contrast to the vibrant, caring community Mary had described. Could it be that the issues raised were not taken seriously?

Susan's heart sank. The decision to move her mother into a senior living community was not just about finding a place with a good reputation; it was about finding a place that felt like home—a place that cared enough to listen and respond to its residents' needs and concerns. The unanswered reviews cast a shadow of doubt over the community, making Susan question if her mother would truly be heard and valued there.

As she continued her search, Susan came across another community. Despite a few mixed reviews, each one had been met with thoughtful replies from the community team, acknowledging the feedback and outlining steps for improvement. This open dialogue, this commitment to transparency and care, resonated with Susan. It wasn't about being perfect; it was about being present, being attentive, and striving to be better.

The contrast was stark. While Mary's personal recommendation of the community held weight, the silence in the face of criticism online spoke volumes. In the end, Susan realized the importance of a community that not only celebrated its successes but also openly addressed its challenges. A community's willingness to engage, to listen, and to evolve became the guiding light in her decision, leading her toward a place where she felt confident her mother would be not just cared for but truly heard.

This story, while a blend of imagination and reality, underscores a vital truth for families navigating the complex world of senior living: the power of responsiveness.

In today’s digital-first world where online reputations can significantly influence decisions, the value of acknowledging and responding to your reviews cannot be overstated. It's a reminder that, beyond amenities and accolades, the heart of your community is reflected in how you respond to your residents' voices, ensuring that every concern is a step toward creating a more personalized and attentive experience.

Let’s take a quick look at 5 tips to help you engage more deeply with current and prospective families, learn from their feedback, and showcase your community's commitment to excellence and care.

Get New Review Alerts

Being informed about new reviews is crucial for managing your community's reputation effectively. This proactive approach enables you to address feedback—whether it's praise or criticism—promptly, ensuring your community's image remains positive. In the digital age, reviews can appear anywhere, from Google and Facebook to industry specific sites like Caring.com. Manually tracking all these platforms is not only challenging but time-consuming.

Enter reputation management platforms like SAVANT. We streamline the process by aggregating reviews from numerous sites into a single dashboard, equipped with timely notifications. This not only simplifies monitoring but also empowers you to respond quickly and thoughtfully, turning potential issues into opportunities for improvement and positive engagement.

Promptly Respond to Your Reviews

What if a prospective family visits a review site like Caring.com today and sees a few negative reviews about your community that don’t have responses? This isn’t a good look and could potentially push them to a competing community. Showing potential residents and families that you're actively engaged by acknowledging and responding to your reviews shows you cae about your residents and respond to issues in a timely manner.

With Caring.com, responding to your reviews is equally as important - especially any negative reviews. The Caring Stars program disqualifies communities from receiving the prestigious award if the community’s Caring.com profile has any negative 1-star and two-star reviews lacking published responses - encouraging the importance of timely, thoughtful replies.

Pro Tip: Designate a team member who is trained on how to respond to reviews. If nobody is assigned to this important task, then nobody is accountable for it.

Take the Conversation Offline

Acknowledging a review publicly is just the first step. For non-anonymous feedback where specific issues are raised, moving the conversation offline shows a genuine commitment to resolution. Remember, the moment a review is posted, the clock starts ticking - a whopping 93% of consumers expect a business to respond to their reviews! 

Prompt outreach not only demonstrates your community's dedication to service but also conveys a deep respect for the resident's experience.

Thank them for their review, empathize with any issues expressed, and provide resolutions. Not only does this make them feel heard and valued, it also creates loyalty, can increase length of stay, and drive referrals - hello wait list!.

Pro Tip: Caring.com doesn’t publicly date your response (nor alert the reviewer), so it’s never too late to respond to the older reviews on your Caring.com listing to be considered for their Caring Stars award. 

Learn From Your Reviews

Every review, whether glowing with praise or pinpointing areas for improvement, can be a treasure trove of insights. Embrace these perspectives as invaluable opportunities for growth. Whether the feedback applies broadly across your community, pertains to a few residents, or addresses the experiences of just a single resident, each review can hold a key to elevating the resident experience.

Actively involving your team in the review process is crucial. Share both accolades and criticisms, fostering an environment where feedback fuels progress. This open approach not only cultivates a sense of pride and accomplishment in what you're doing right but also instills a collective responsibility to address and learn from any shortcomings.

Share Your Reviews!

Sharing your community's reviews is a powerful strategy to build trust and attract prospective residents. Highlighting positive feedback on your website and social media reassures families that they are making the right choice. This can significantly increase the likelihood of in-person tours, directly contributing to higher occupancy rates.

With SAVANT’s website widget - built exclusively for senior living communities, sharing your Caring.com and other online reviews can be as easy as installing a simple line of code on your website. This widget not only streamlines the process of showcasing reviews but also ensures that your community’s achievements and the quality of care are front and center for all site visitors.

We hope you find these tips to be helpful and you're inspired to elevate your online reputation!

To learn more about review alerts, response tools, and showcasing your Caring.com reviews on your website and social media pages, please visit SAVANT or email me.

Editor’s note: Caring.com also recently hosted a review response webinar with SAVANT tips and more.

Are you familiar with Caring.com’s annual Caring Stars award program? It can help boost sales and marketing (as well as support staff recruiting and retention) for your senior living community or home care agency!

Launched in 2012 as the first of its kind in the senior living industry and now open to home care agencies as well, the Caring Stars award honors service excellence based on consumer ratings and reviews on Caring.com. Senior living communities and home care agencies achieve the “Caring Stars” award through lots of high praise in online reviews from their customers — older adults and family caregivers — and by responding to any critical feedback in negative (1-star and 2-star) reviews.

The Caring Stars award helps families narrow their choices to the best of the best, and quickly find the right senior care providers for their elderly loved ones. The integrity of our reviews program and the extensive vetting we do of the Caring Stars helps instill confidence for family caregivers and older adults in requesting more information about the agencies and taking a tour of the senior living communities. In fact, in our analysis of directory listings for our partners with the award vs. those without:

Caring Stars winners have averaged twice as many inquiries and 3x the move-ins as partners without the award

Every year, Caring Stars also generates positive content, media coverage, and social buzz — and boosts morale — for winning communities and agencies. Some Caring Star winners put the badge or winner widget on their websites, within e-newsletters, and in their billing statements, as ‘social proof’ of the high quality services they’re delivering. Caring Stars also frequently get featured in their local newspapers which helps raise awareness about their high quality services with more people in their area. Both the award and review excerpts make for good content on their social profiles as well. And the award gives senior living communities and home care agencies an opportunity to celebrate staff for a job well done, and build enthusiasm and pride in their workplace. Some communities even host a Caring Stars celebration with residents, and we at Caring.com enjoy visiting some of these resident parties as well.

More than 650 communities and agencies were recognized as Caring Stars 2021. Congratulations to each of these senior care providers for earning such accolades from their customers!

The deadline to qualify for Caring Stars 2022 is October 15, 2021.

There is no application for the award — it’s based on the reviews on your Caring.com listing. To be a Caring Star of 2022, we recommend you plan to meet or exceed the 2021 winner criteria. We also recently held a series of free webinars to help senior living communities and home care agencies better understand how to get and respond to reviews, and how to qualify for Caring Stars 2022:

• June 2021 – Senior Living: How to Optimize Your Online Reputation: Peruse the slides — slide 41 has specific goals for communities; or watch the webinar recording

• June 2021 – Home Care: How to Optimize Your Online Reputation: Peruse the slides – slide 42 has specific goals for agencies, or watch the webinar recording

• July 2021 – How the Major Reviews Websites Vary, presented with ReviewTrackers: Peruse the slides, or watch the webinar recording

• August 2021 – How to Ask for Reviews, presented with Consumer Fusion: Peruse the slides, or watch the webinar recording

Have questions? Please contact our reviews team at reviews@caring.com or (650) 762-8190.

***

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT CARING POSTCARDS: We moved our postcard processing operations to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2019, and then sunsetted the reviews-by-postcard program in 2021 (blank card distribution ceased in March 2021, and the postage permit on return cards expires 9/30/21). We now offer a review call-in line. Contact reviews@caring.com for assistance in using this free service for partners only.

Editor’s note: This article is published each year with updated dates and info.

Allyn P. currently owns a couple of residential care homes in the Western United States and is in process of buying more. He doesn’t want us to be more specific, because he’s had so much success with his Caring.com partnership that he wants to keep us a secret.

“As soon as I signed up one of my residential care homes, I think within 72 hours, I had a total of 7 very qualified leads! And within 48 hours of signing up, I had my first move-in from the second lead I received from Caring.com. It was pretty shocking actually,” Allyn P. said. “At that point, I didn’t want any of my local competitors to know about Caring.com.”

Before upgrading his first residential care home listing on Caring.com, he’d tried a few other marketing channels, including advertising on a very popular search engine, advertising on a very popular reviews website, and working with offline local referral agents. He thought online directories and Internet referral agencies had a fee structure that wasn’t really in line with the budgets of residential care homes, so he explored other options.

“None of them worked, especially for the money I was spending,” he said, “And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure about Caring's site either at the start. I was extremely skeptical, but that feeling shifted to ‘Wow, this is a real thing!’ rather quick. I dropped the others, because Caring.com was supplying me a steady flow of qualified leads, resulting in more move-ins!”

One big reason that Allyn P. has been so successful with his residential care home listings on Caring.com is because he’s taken advantage of the review collection services in the partner package, including leveraging Caring’s reviews-by-phone service that wasn’t available with any other lead generating businesses. In fact, despite his second residential care home being fully occupied, he still upgraded his second listing to the partnership package anyway, just for the reviews program that Caring.com offers. (Even though the second home was full, he was able to offer prospective residents a place on the waiting list, or offered them a tour of his other residential care home nearby with vacancy).

He states, “It was absolutely worth it to upgrade my second home’s listing just to take advantage of Caring.com's review collection program. I absolutely believe the industry’s business owners are missing the fact that their online reputation is essential to growth and keeping their facilities full. Families are absolutely reading reviews and they need to be current and extensive to be effective.”

His focus on reviews has paid off: the first residential care home (starting in mid-2020) rapidly went from zero to 10 reviews and earned the Caring Stars 2021 award. He continues to focus and build his reviews in 2021, and has added 2 more reviews for a total of 12. His second residential care home is off to a great start in 2021, too, with 4 reviews and more on the way. His goal is to get each of his residential care homes to earn the Caring Stars 2022 award.

Senior living searchers seek out online reviews in their research and selection process. Reviews help Caring.com partners elevate in the directory rankings, and attract more potential residents and their family members to the listings. Allyn P. has seen this effect with both his residential care home listings — they’ve had about 1,000 pageviews in a short period of time (in months rather than years).

“Online reviews are huge for credibility for bringing people to your door,” he said. “People will call you when you have great online reviews, that they believe.”

He continued, “We have reviews on other sites that are 5-stars, but are older and just contain a few words. This is not really helpful to prospective families and they don’t believe them anyway. I’m always directing our residents/residents’ families to the reviews on Caring.com because they’re lengthy, current and believable. Caring’s collection of reviews-by-phone has made a HUGE difference to my businesses.”

He has also done an excellent job converting Caring’s referrals into customers too. Within 6 months, he achieved seven (7) move-ins just for one residential care home — realizing a high conversion rate from the leads he received.

“You have to work the lead as soon as you get the lead. You can’t let it go 2-3 days,” he says. “I have discovered that the first, second or third in, one of them wins, because the families are generally in a hurry to find a place. They don’t have the time or desire to go tour many different facilities, or they just get overwhelmed. We’re not the only residential care home or assisted living community calling them, and we have to compete by being fast in responding and booking them for a tour.”

His sales activity doesn’t stop there though. “You gotta follow up. Fortunes are made in the follow-up. Initially: call, text, or email them until you actually get ahold of them, and then decide if necessary, how to follow up later,” he suggests. “I will even contact them a month later, two or three months later, because some families are researching two to six months out from when they need your service, and you need to work with their timing and keep in contact with them as a great potential fit for their needs.”

As Allyn P. so eloquently sums it up: “We provide excellent service, safe, beautiful homes, and now 5-star reviews to prove it. With Caring.com, I have an edge on the competition and I definitely have selfish motives for keeping Caring.com a secret.”

***Results can vary by account and location. Please contact an account executive to learn more about the opportunities for your area: sales@caring.com or (855) 897-2433.