Ep #16: Using Social Surveys to Boost Your Business

Scott Harris and Craig Pollock explain how mortgage professionals can systematically collect, automate, and distribute customer reviews to dominate local Google search, generate organic leads, and build social proof at scale. Best for LOs and branch managers who have closed hundreds of loans but have little to no visible online reputation to show for it.

Takeaways you can run this week

• Send a survey email immediately at closing — not days later. Use the borrower's familiarity with your email address (they've been opening your emails for 30 days) to drive a 45-50% completion rate. Keep the survey to 3-4 questions max.
• After a borrower completes a positive survey, send one follow-up prompt: 'Would you take 30 more seconds and leave your comments on my Google review page?' Social Survey reports 25-30% of happy customers complete this second step — which is what drives local search rankings.
• When you record a video testimonial at the closing table, transcribe the customer's words verbatim, add their city/state, and post the text above or below the video on Facebook. Tag the customer AND the referring agent to expand reach to both their networks simultaneously.
• Add a hyperlink in your email signature that reads: 'See what my customers are saying about me' and point it to a single page that aggregates all your reviews. Put this same link on every piece of print and digital marketing you produce.
• If your company won't adopt Social Survey at the enterprise level, sign up for the 30-day free trial individual account, manually send surveys for 30-50 days, document any deals or referrals generated, then present those results to your branch or regional manager to make the case for company-wide adoption (enterprise clients typically pay for their LOs — LOs pay nothing).
• Host a lunch-and-learn for 5-10 agents using online reputation management as the topic. Walk them through why Yelp is insufficient, how Google reviews drive local search rankings, and show your own review results as a live example — positioning yourself as the expert who taught them something actionable.

The playbook

1. 1. Connect your LOS data feed (e.g., Encompass) to Social Survey so closings trigger automatically.
2. 2. At closing, system sends a 3-4 question survey from the loan officer's email address.
3. 3. Happy customers: system shares review to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for LO, branch, and region pages simultaneously.
4. 4. Happy customers receive a second prompt to post their comments directly to the LO's Google review page (pop-up opens the Google panel for them).
5. 5. Unhappy customers: system apologizes, collects detailed feedback, escalates to manager — customer feels heard, reducing likelihood of public negative posts.
6. 6. LO and manager receive alert on every completed survey (positive or negative).
7. 7. All reviews — including Zillow — aggregate onto a single indexed profile page that updates daily, driving organic Google ranking for local mortgage search terms.

Worth quoting

“If you're not managing your online reputation, it'll manage you.”

“Is my data at rest or is it in motion? There are so many systems where great data just sits on somebody's desk.”

Best for

LOs who have closed dozens or hundreds of loans but have fewer than 20 Google reviews and no systematic process for collecting or distributing customer feedback.