<p><a href="https://www.guyouconstruction.com/">Guyou Construction</a> is a full-service energy solutions provider that is known for its high-quality products and boutique experience—but that experience doesn’t stop at its products and installations. The number one priority at Guyou is to provide outstanding customer service while helping customers find the best solar, roofing and maintenance solutions for them. As a result, their reputation as a top-of-the-line solar solution company began to spread throughout Orange County, San Diego County, Riverside County, Los Angeles County, San Bernardino County, and now Sacramento County, and suddenly, their business was wanted everywhere from Los Angeles to San Diego.</p>
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<p>As their business continued to expand across Southern California, the Guyou team saw a need for a way to seamlessly gather reviews and feedback, as well as an effective and frictionless method of communicating with potential – and existing – customers.</p>
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<p>As LeRoy Reynolds, Guyou&#8217;s Director of Information Technology explained, “I think it was just one of those things where the company wanted something that they could open up an avenue of communication with customers. And that&#8217;s a huge driving point for us. We want to be in communication with customers, and make sure there&#8217;s an open line of communication where they can contact us how they choose.”</p>
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<h3>How Guyou Construction Transformed Their Online Reputation</h3>
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<div class="textLayer">As a company that focuses heavily on the customer experience, LeRoy and his team thought that gathering reviews was a must. Being a largely customer-centric business, with installations and maintenance acting as two of the main services, reviews about how your employees interact with customers can have a huge impact on potential leads. Guyou takes immense pride in their customer service, and that’s a direct result of the CEO’s values—Marcus Gayou wanted to foster a welcoming, friendly, and helpful environment for his customers and employees.</div>
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<p>“One of the reasons I joined the company is it&#8217;s very family-oriented&#8221;, said LeRoy. &#8220;Marcus Gayou, the CEO, is very hands-on with everything. He wants to make sure everybody&#8217;s happy. He wants to make sure that the work has good quality. That&#8217;s one of the reasons why we push good reviews and ensure we get those five stars.”</p>
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<div class="canvasWrapper">LeRoy wanted a simple way to gather testimonials that they could promote online, so they started using <a href="https://www.podium.com/reviews/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Podium Reviews</a>.</div>
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<div class="canvasWrapper">After getting started with Podium, the process of gathering reviews became easier and more streamlined for Guyou’s employees. As Marissa Billiu, Guyou&#8217;s Referral Manager told us, “once a job is complete&#8230; I&#8217;d call the customer, introduce myself, and explain that we were out there to replace a bad inverter, ‘How&#8217;s everything working now? Great? Okay, cool! I&#8217;m trying to grow our online presence. Would you mind helping us out, leaving us a positive review?’ They&#8217;ll say yes. And then I&#8217;ll send them a link through Podium.” Podium makes it simple and convenient for home services professionals like Marissa to gather reviews. Not only that, but it makes boosting their online reputation a breeze.</div>
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<div class="canvasWrapper">Marissa also went on to explain, “When I was making phone calls asking for reviews, I wasn&#8217;t getting as many reviews as when I&#8217;m texting these people because you just have to think about everyone&#8217;s day today, they&#8217;re at work, they&#8217;re driving, they&#8217;re living in a fast-paced environment, so it&#8217;s easier just to respond to a text. So in my world, that&#8217;s what I choose to do and it&#8217;s working.”</div>
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<h3 class="overlayLayer">How SMS Marketing Optimized Guyou&#8217;s Referral Process</h3>
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<p>In addition to Reviews, Guyou has also been using <a href="https://www.podium.com/campaigns/">Campaigns</a> to gather referrals from existing customers.</p>
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<p>Marissa explained, “Every month or so, I&#8217;ll come up with something creative about the referral program. ‘Hey, reminder, we have summer specials going on right now. Don&#8217;t forget to tell your friends and family,’ and then I just send a message to all of our customers and I get responses that way as well.”</p>
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<p>These promotional messages didn&#8217;t just bring in responses – they also generated revenue. Marissa’s first referral campaign resulted in an 11.1% clickthrough rate on their first campaign, compared to the average 2.5% clickthrough rate commonly seen with email campaigns, plus three referrals and one sale for over $30,000. Through a single <a href="https://cms.podium.com/guides/ultimate-guide-to-sms-marketing/">SMS marketing</a> text message, Marissa was able to lock down a noteworthy sale that resulted in tremendous ROI.</p>
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<p>Marissa’s innovative use of Campaigns to gather referrals has helped to bolster Guyou’s online reputation while simultaneously rewarding repeat customers, making it a win-win for both parties.</p>
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<h3>Implementing text-to-pay and Podium Card Readers</h3>
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<p>With multiple departments in need of a streamlined payment solution, LeRoy looked to Podium Payments. “A few different departments use Payments, including our service department, install department, and site audit department.” Centralizing these departments&#8217; transactions within Podium improves Guyou&#8217;s visibility into what drives revenue, and makes financial tracking a breeze.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.podium.com/payments/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Podium Payments</a> provides a flexible solution for Guyou as they continually strive to improve their customer experience. By offering text-to-pay and recently implementing Podium&#8217;s Card Readers to collect payment via credit card on-site, they cover every type of payment individual customers might prefer.</p>
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<p>LeRoy explained, “We can say, ‘Well, we can do this at the time of service, or you can pay upfront.’ And sometimes that&#8217;s where that comes into play because they prefer to pay on the spot, ‘Oh, I don&#8217;t mind paying right now.’ So we send them a link through Podium where they complete their purchase, ‘Okay, well, we&#8217;re going to send you a link,’ it goes through Podium and then they go through that link and make the purchase. And from what I&#8217;ve heard, we&#8217;ve had some great success with it.”</p>
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<p>The ease of use didn’t stop at customers though—it also made life significantly easier for Guyou’s accounting team. After seeing the early proof that Podium Payments provided an easy-to-use and highly effective way of tracking revenue, the accounting team couldn&#8217;t wait to expand Podium across other departments of the business. “Our accounting team said, ‘Yeah, how is this being done? Okay, do that for everybody.’ They said, ‘Hey, this is a very good way to get payment. We get our invoicing done faster. We get things done faster on the cashflow side,’&#8221; LeRoy explained.</p>
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<h3>Podium as an all-in-one solution</h3>
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<p>As LeRoy reflected on using Podium’s suite of business tools, he explained, “If you want to be a company that can [gather] quick payments and monitor cashflow pretty quickly, Podium is a great option&#8230; there&#8217;s a lot of flexibility with it. So for smaller companies that want to be very communicative, this is definitely the way to go.” Podium has become Guyou&#8217;s go-to solution for effective communication and payment gathering.</p>
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<p>As Guyou Construction has expanded over the years, it needed software that was capable of expanding with them. Podium offered that for them, and allowed them to remain true to their core values as a local business. “We&#8217;re focused on expanding as much as we can, but keep our friendly execution. We want our customers to be able to come to us and ask us questions, or if they have any concerns, we can put them at ease. Which we do well.”</p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Podium can help your business too. <a href="https://www.podium.com/free-trial/">Get started with Podium for free</a> today.</span></p>


Revenue processed with Podium Payments over the last 12 months

Revenue generated from first text marketing campaign

Reviews gathered in first 18 months with Podium

Guyou implements Podium to make doing business easier – for both customers and employees

$500,000

$30,000

400