Twenty barbershops were read in the set someone searching around Eden Prairie is shown, and not one of them had answered any of its recent reviews. That is not a thin trade. The three most-reviewed barbershops in that set carry 681, 550 and 357 Google reviews, and the median across the twenty is 149. The median rating is 4.9. A median is one figure for a whole trade, so it does not tell you which listing is which — but the review files are there and the replies are not.
Among the nail salons we can name, the picture is different. Daisy Nails answered 10 of its last 10 reviews and carries 435 reviews in total. ZenAway Nail & Spa answered 9 of its last 10 and carries 739. LVY Nails Chanhassen answered 5 of its last 10, against 398 reviews. Those three are the nail salons answering the most of their recent reviews; the rest of the twenty we read are not described here one way or the other. The median nail salon in this catchment carries 190 reviews at a median rating of 4.75.
Hair salons give two more names with their own counts. Hairazors Salon answered 9 of its last 10, with 311 reviews. Sanctuary Salonspa answered 8 of its last 10, with 266. The median across the twenty hair salons we read is 106.5 reviews and a 4.8 rating, next to 149 for barbershops and 190 for nail salons. Three medians, three different depths, and nothing in any of them that separates one listing from another.
For backdrop, and covering every trade together rather than these three: across the 46 businesses we measured in what someone searching in Eden Prairie is shown, a typical one answered 81% of its recent reviews. Sixty businesses were read in this group, out of 460 across all trades. Eden Prairie's population is 63,249 and its median household income is $127,732.
What to do about it
The reply counts on this page are counts of ten. Our figures are drawn from each business's most recent reviews, so a barbershop sitting on 681 reviews is not facing 681 replies — it is facing the recent handful, and then the habit of keeping up as new ones arrive. Catching up once and keeping up are two different jobs, and only the second one shows.
Answer the positive reviews as well as the difficult ones, and write them in your own words rather than from a stock line repeated down the list; a reply that would fit under anyone's review says nothing about yours. If you want a sense of the scale this is done at, Hairazors Salon answered 9 of its last 10 and Daisy Nails answered 10 of its last 10 — ten reviews, not hundreds. Pick the most recent ones, work backwards, and stop when you have caught up rather than when you have run out of patience.
Barbershops
We read 20 barbershops businesses here and not one had answered a single one of its ten most recent reviews. The first owner here who replies is the only one doing it.
Hair salons
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hairazors Salon | 9 of 10 | 311 | 4.9 |
| 2 | Sanctuary Salonspa | 8 of 10 | 266 | 4.3 |
Nail salons
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daisy Nails | 10 of 10 | 435 | 4.9 |
| 2 | ZenAway Nail & Spa | 9 of 10 | 739 | 4.9 |
| 3 | LVY Nails Chanhassen | 5 of 10 | 398 | 4.5 |