A pet parent finds your facility during a Saturday morning Google search. They have a trip coming up, a dog who has never been boarded, and about four minutes before the kids need breakfast. They’re not calling you yet — they’re reading your reviews.
That’s the tour before the tour: the first real impression of a business, formed entirely without you in the room. And what prospective customers weigh most isn’t the star rating. It’s whether reviews back each other up, what the reviewer actually described, and how recently they wrote it.