This is the story of how guest reviews almost killed my business. It’s a story of survival. It’s a story of growing exceptionally stronger. Really, it’s the story of how this happened:
Last year (2024) our review scores started going down from a 4.9 Average in January to a 4.2 Average by the following January 2025. Up to that point we honestly didn’t pay much attention to reviews, because they were always pretty good. We essentially took reviews for granted.
By January, we were staring into an existential crisis. Entire accounts were being suspended and shut down permanently because of our persistent bad reviews. We had to do something.
It’s now October 2025 and we’re nearing our target of 4.8 STAR average review. September came in at 4.78 Average review score, which came after a 4.75 average Score for August. We have been making steady progress all year and in the last 4 months in particular, we seem to have found some key practices that consistently improve the quality of the experience we deliver to guests.
Namely, we’ve found ways to improve the quality and consistency of how our internal team communicates with guests and solves their problems; the quality and consistency of cleaners that are spread across multiple markets, and to bias guests towards leaving us a good review.
I’ll break down the key practices that created those three things, but first some background:
Part 1: When Growth Nearly Killed Us: Link
Part 2: Reinventing Guest Communication: Link
Part 3: More Brain Power: Link
Part 4: Cleanliness – A whole other beast: Link
Part 5: Getting ahead of the guest experience: Link
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