How one brand improved its reputation by giving its happiest customers a voice
For a year, every shopper who searched “Patio Enclosures reviews” only saw complaints. This is how they flipped that narrative to show their true 4.4-star status within months.
Calling your customers Verifying every review Increasing LLM citations
- 1.1 4.4
- Displayed star rating
- ~2 mo.
- To clear 3.5 stars
- 4.6
- Avg. verified review
An online reputation that didn’t reflect the real story
Patio Enclosures relies on great word-of-mouth recommendations to build its base of sunroom customers.
But online, the story didn’t reflect the great work being done for customers. Through all of 2025, the only reviews arriving to the ConsumerAffairs platform were complaints, averaging about one star, month after month.
Those complaints were the first thing a prospect saw when researching the brand. Google’s AI summary even led with “poor workmanship, scheduling delays, and difficult customer service.” Their satisfied majority of customers simply weren’t in the conversation on the platform.
We must capture more online reviews from our customer base, because we know they are satisfied. We simply need to ask for the review! The negative reviews we have seen on ConsumerAffairs are disproportionate to the total by a wide margin.
How Patio Enclosures started asking for reviews
Melissa Skinner set the goal to unearth the stories from happy customers and turn the sentiment around before peak season.
Day to day, it fell to Shandra Bigler, who manages reviews across every platform the brand lives on.
I knew we needed to reach out to more customers to generate reviews, I was struggling with how I was going to accomplish that alone.
In January, they signed up for Aspect to proactively reach out to more customers
Patio Enclosures contracted with Aspect by ConsumerAffairs to actively reach out to their recent customer base to start generating more reviews.
By proactively reaching out by phone and email, the stories of the happy majority started pouring into the platform. Turns out, reviews averaged 4.5 to 4.7 stars when you asked everyone for their story. The star rating crossed 3.5 in the first month of collection. The grey “what if we’d done nothing” line would never have moved.
Why their star rating improved so fast
Aspect by ConsumerAffairs collected reviews from the entire customer base. Turns out, most recent customers told us verified, high-rated stories about their experience with Patio Enclosures.
Those are exactly the stories that the rating method weights most heavily. ConsumerAffairs’ published method: A company’s ratings are a time-based and verification-based weighted average numerical calculation of the ratings submitted by consumers in the most recent 24-month period.
Recent reviews count far more than old ones. Patio Enclosures’ new verified reviews are recent and positive, so they take over the weight of the star rating methodology, while older organic reviews age out of the window.
It wasn’t only positive reviews, but every complaint is an opportunity to improve
The star rating was never a straight line up. In the spring, a cluster of organic one-star reviews came in at once and dragged the rating back down. Shandra felt every point of it.
“We were starting to make great progress, and then a series of negative reviews came in and brought our score back down. It was disheartening.”
Patio Enclosures addressed the underlying issues in the complaints. So when Aspect increased proactive outreach, those verified, positive stories out-paced the new one-star reviews. Their star rating recovered to its previous 4.0 star level and held. The lesson Patio Enclosures took from it was the one they already lived by:
“This is home improvement. Not everything goes perfectly to plan because we are dealing with the unforeseen and many project variables. Things happen. But we own it, we apologize, and then we provide a solution to make it right.”
Improving brand conversion and visibility where buyers research
A higher star rating only improves conversion if buyers see it. The ConsumerAffairs profile now ranks at the top of search for “patio enclosures reviews.”
Google’s AI Overview also cites the profile, putting the brand’s improved star rating and customer stories in front of shoppers right when they’re deciding to purchase.
From a 1.0 to 4.4 star rating, heading into peak season
Seven months in, Patio Enclosures sits at a 4.4 star rating and climbing, with verified reviews now accurately reflecting the brand’s reputation instead of a handful of angry outliers.
I am pleasantly surprised in how quickly we were able to get our rating turned around on the ConsumerAffairs platform – getting us from a 1.0 rating to where we are now is a testament to their process & methodology. To say I’m thrilled with the results is an understatement.
The results for Patio Enclosures
- “Does this actually work?”
- From a 1.1 → 4.4 star rating. Their reputation was always this good. All they had to do was ask more customers.
- “How long until I see results?”
- Patio Enclosures’ star rating improved to 3.5 in the first month and increased to over 4.0 within roughly four months.
- “How can a rating improve that fast?”
- The star rating weights recent, verified reviews most, so new reviews take over and older reviews fade.
- “Won’t new bad reviews undo it?”
- They do, but the majority of your customers are happy. So just keep asking everyone for feedback.
- “Will anyone even see it?”
- Yes. The ConsumerAffairs profile ranks at the top of search and is cited in Google’s AI Overview.
Talk to an Aspect expert
Tell us what your customer records look like and we’ll tell you whether proactive collection would improve your star rating, and say so if it wouldn’t.