Have you ever wished you could warn other professionals about a particularly bad customer? Have you ever wanted to be able to sing the praises of a wonderful customer to other professionals?
Well, now you can. ContractorsCustomers.com launched in January and allows professionals, particularly those in the building industry, to leave reviews of their customers for other professionals to read.
“It’s always been kind of a hope of small business owners that they can have something like this, where before they [take a] job, they can see what kind of experiences other businesses had with [those clients],” Scott Carzo, president of ContractorsCustomers.com, told REMODELING.
Unlike other review sites like Yelp, the reviews on ContractorsCustomers.com are strictly questionnaires. There is no space to leave a written review. Carzo says the questionnaire includes the most important things a business owner would want to know: "Have other businesses worked well with this customer? Would other businesses work for this person again? Have other businesses been paid and paid in a timely fashion?”
“The questionnaire keeps things on task,” Carzo says. “People aren’t getting off track and slinging mud. They can only give professional, informative responses.”
To access or leave reviews of customers, professionals must become members of the site, for which there is currently no fee. To search for a customer, professionals type in the name of the client and are given a list of reviews. Customers are differentiated by their street addresses.
Though many homeowners might not yet be aware of the website, Carzo says he has heard of some homeowners asking the professionals they hire to leave them good reviews. If the reviews of the homeowner are favorable, “[they're] going to attract a higher quality of business people who want to work with [them],” he says.
Despite its name, ContractorsCustomers.com isn't limited just to those in the construction industry. He has allowed other professionals, such as Realtors and marketing consultants, to leave reviews of their clients on the website. He also allows subcontractors to leave reviews of general contractors and vice versa.
Carzo says he's seen good reviews, bad reviews, and everything in between on the website. He prefers to call ContractorsCustomers.com a "rainbow list," saying that "it's absolutely not a blacklist."
Carzo has been spreading the word about his website through emails, mailers, and the ever-familiar word of mouth. The feedback he's gotten for his website does not have nearly as much variation as the reviews posted on it.
“We’ve had very good response,” Carzo says. “Two basic comments are either, ‘What a great idea!’ or ‘It’s about time!’”
