Marketing Support
Review Reputation Management for roofing companies
A rating takes years to build and an afternoon to dent. The imbalance is arithmetic, and the only defence against it is built long beforehand.
An ask, a reply, and a number that is real
A request made at the moment the work finishes and the customer is standing in front of it, offered to everyone on the same terms, with nothing given in exchange.
A public reply written by somebody who can actually say what happened on that job — accurate, unhurried, and in your voice rather than in a template that has answered forty other complaints.
And a total you did not manufacture. Whatever the number is, it describes your customers, which means you can rely on it when it matters and defend it if anybody asks.
Slow to earn, quick to lose, and the maths is the reason
Consider what a bad review actually does. It does not do a fixed amount of damage — it does an amount that depends entirely on how many others it lands among. Against a long history it is a blip a reader discounts. Against a handful it is a substantial share of everything anyone can see, and no amount of explaining changes that.
Which produces the trap this function exists to avoid. The company that has never systematically asked is not merely at zero; it is fragile in a specific way, because it has no denominator. And the moment it discovers this is invariably the moment it acquires a bad review, when doing anything at all looks like a reaction to that review — including asking properly, which now reads as damage control to any customer who notices.
Roofing is unusually exposed here. The work is expensive, infrequent and emotionally loaded; homeowners research it far more than they research smaller trades; and a single storm season can put more jobs through the business in three months than the previous year did. Any one of those customers can be unhappy for reasons that have nothing to do with the roof — an insurance outcome, a delay, a neighbour’s driveway.
The response is unglamorous and has to be started early: every customer asked, every time, on the same terms. Reply to what arrives. Let the number be whatever the work makes it. That builds slowly and it is the only thing that actually holds when a bad week arrives.
Two rules that decide how the ask is worded
The department page sets out the boundary this desk works inside. Two further provisions govern the mechanics of asking, and they are worth reading precisely because the popular summaries of them are wrong. The first addresses paying for a sentiment. Under 16 CFR 465.4, it is a violation “to provide compensation or other incentives in exchange for, or conditioned expressly or by implication on, the writing or creation of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment”. Note what the line turns on: the sentiment, not the review.
The second addresses who is writing. At 16 CFR 465.5, a review by an officer or manager of the business is addressed where it “fails to have a clear and conspicuous disclosure of the officer’s or manager’s material relationship to the business, unless, in the case of a consumer testimonial, the relationship is otherwise clear to the audience.” The closing qualifier is part of the provision and is quoted with it.
Our practice is set well inside both, and deliberately so. Nothing is offered in exchange for a review of any kind, which means the sentiment distinction never has to be applied. Nobody connected to this brand or to your company writes one. That is not caution for its own sake — a desk whose position depends on interpreting a line correctly every single time will eventually get it wrong, and the value of the rating is precisely that nobody had to.
This describes two federal provisions in general terms. It is not legal advice, it makes no determination about your practices or any review, and it characterises no practice as compliant. Those questions belong with your own counsel.
Roofing Back Office is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by any software vendor named on this site. All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
The desk closest to the department’s line
Of everything inside Marketing Support, this function sits nearest the boundary the department draws — publish and respond, never author, procure, incentivise or remove. That rule is set out in full on the department page and is not restated here, because a boundary repeated in seven places is a boundary nobody reads once.
What owners ask about their rating
Can we offer a gift card for a five-star review?
No, and the reason is narrower than the usual answer. Offering something in exchange for a review is one question; conditioning it on the review being positive is what the rule below addresses directly. This desk does not offer anything at all, which keeps us clear of the distinction rather than reliant on getting it right.
A competitor is leaving us fake reviews. What can you do?
Report them through the platform’s own process and keep a record of what was reported and when. That is genuinely the extent of it, and anyone promising removal is describing a decision that belongs to the platform. Documenting a pattern properly is also what makes it credible if it ever needs to be escalated further.
Should the owner reply to bad reviews personally?
Somebody who knows what actually happened should, and often that is you. What matters is that the reply is accurate and calm rather than that it is quick. A reply written by somebody guessing at the job usually makes the exchange worse, because the customer knows the details and the reader can tell who does.
When is the right moment to ask?
When the work is finished and the customer is visibly satisfied — walking the property, seeing the site clean, being handed the paperwork. Days later the goodwill is intact but the specificity is gone, and a review written from memory is shorter and vaguer than one written the same afternoon.
Can we ask only the customers who seemed happy?
That is a request we decline, and it is worth being direct about why. Asking selectively produces a rating that describes your happiest customers rather than your work, which is a number you will eventually rely on and cannot. The ask goes to everyone on the same terms.
Can you take down a review we think is unfair?
No. This desk does not remove or suppress reviews under any circumstances — that boundary belongs to the department and the page below sets it out. What we can do is reply where a reply is warranted, and report what genuinely appears to breach a platform’s own rules.
The two provisions quoted here
- 16 CFR 465.4 — Buying positive or negative consumer reviews — U.S. Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
- 16 CFR 465.5 — Insider consumer reviews and consumer testimonials — U.S. Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
Start asking before you need the answer
The only bad time to begin is the week after a bad review, and that is when nearly everybody starts.