How BOY Barbershop scored 431 reviews in under 6 months

Overview

BOY Barbershop - a local shop opened by seasoned barbers Greg and Brook - was a labour of love, bringing decades of traditional barbering experience to the sunny Gold Coast suburb of Mermaid Beach.

The duo brought with them scores of loyal clients, providing a traditional barbershop experience worth raving about: gentleman's haircuts, cut-throat shaves, hot towels, great banter and complimentary beverages.

The team needed a way to quickly grow their online reviews to reflect their impressive in-store experience, so they could tap into the boundless pool of new customers searching for a local barbershop. But asking customers for online reviews in-store is often awkward and un-immersive, which is why Brook and Greg sought out an approach to review generation that would make it easy for them AND their customers.

Impact of barbershop reviews

In barbering, reviews are everything. Nobody wants a bad haircut! Customers are often loyal to their barbershop, with repeat business the reward for a great experience. This is where first impressions count. When new customers search for a barbershop online, they'll often only consider the top 3 most-reviewed businesses.

BOY needed a way to quickly grow their Google reviews, so new customers would be more likely to see them (and choose them) first. Organic growth was steady but slow. They'd collected around 60 reviews in their first year of business and while these reviews were all positive, the team knew there were hundreds of other happy customers, walking in and out each day, who had not left a review.

That's when they knew it had to be simple. It had to be automated. It had to be personal.

Review automation made easy

BOY had previously used their booking software's standard feedback form to ask for customer reviews, but unfortunately, these reviews were all collected internally and never made it to Google (which meant zero contribution to the shop's online presence in Google searches). Many marketplaces, booking and appointment setting tools preference their own reviews ecosystem like this, to the detriment of the customer: you, the barbershop.

BOY switched to Cloutly to help drive and automate reviews on the sites that mattered most (namely, Google).

Using Cloutly, they were able to set up a high-personalised review page (no cookie-cutter requests here) and trigger it to be sent out to clients via SMS following their appointment. This all integrated seamlessly with their existing booking system and meant that every client was now given a simple, streamlined way to review the shop on Google.

Knowing that at any time, 30-50% of customers would not have a Google account, Cloutly was still able to recover and capture these reviews using our "no-login" pathway. This meant the team at BOY never missed out on feedback.

In just 6 short months, BOY Barbershop was able to maintain its perfect 5 star Google rating, while collecting a total 431 reviews across the review sites that mattered most. This led to them becoming one of the highest-rated, most-reviewed barbershops in town, significantly faster than their local competitors.

Now, when browsing customers are searching for a local barbershop, they often call BOY first.