Caring Stars 2025: How to Qualify by Deadline

In our half-hour Time to Shine: Caring Stars 2025 qualification webinar in August, we shared why the Caring Stars award is worth your attention; how this industry distinction helps communities and agencies in the “digital drive-by” (or online research by seniors and their families) and supports the success of your business; what a stellar reviews profile looks like; and how to get and respond to reviews on Caring.com.??

The soon-approaching deadline for the Caring Stars 2025 award is Tuesday, October 15, 2024. There is no application process or fees, but you do need recent reviews, review responses, a high overall average rating, and a good volume of published reviews too. Does your community or agency have the reviews profile needed to be considered??

What Does It Take to Win??

Earning the Caring Stars award isn't easy, but the effort is worth it. For 2025, we’ve increased focus on recent reviews and review responses, while maintaining the high integrity standards this program has been known for since launching as the first of its kind in 2012.?

To be considered for the 2024 award, we suggest the following reviews metrics to achieve or exceed…?

For senior care agencies and senior living communities with a resident capacity of 21 or higher:

For smaller senior living communities and residential care homes having 20 or fewer resident capacity:?

We also have quality assurance measures in our Caring Stars winner determination:?

How To Build A Stellar Reviews Profile for Caring Stars

A common mistake that can hold you back from Caring Stars status is asking the wrong people for reviews — this leads to those reviews being declined or removed.

Here’s who to ask and who to avoid asking:?

As you can see: We’re focused on publishing authentic reviews from cognitively-healthy seniors and their families. We host their first-hand feedback about your eldercare services, and we don’t publish reviews submitted by your employees, any industry insiders, or anyone else with a conflict of interest. This policy is covered in our review guidelines too.?

Also, to help seniors stay safe online and avoid disclosing too much personally-identifiable information (PII): Encourage senior living community residents not to use their real names as their reviewer display names (they should avoid including their apartment numbers too). This is a simple measure to protect their privacy, since their home address (the community address) is published on the page where their review will appear once published.?

Ways to Get Reviews on Caring.com?

The fastest, easiest way for your customers to add reviews is via online forms on Caring.com. You can point your customers directly to the form for your profile, or you can give them the general form link. By giving them the link, you save them time and make it as convenient as possible for them to submit their review (they don’t have to go searching for where to enter it). Not sure of your review form link? Contact our team for help.??

Have seniors willing to give a review who aren’t yet comfortable online? With our free reviews-by-phone services for Caring partners, tech-challenged seniors can participate too! This service also includes a free “Review Us on Caring” handout with the toll-free number for our review call-in line, and we have review collection agents now taking calls seven days a week during daytime hours. Contact our team for more info.?

Those are the two most common ways that communities and agencies ask for reviews. A couple additional methods among those we discussed in the Time to Shine webinar include:?

• We’ve been integrated with Activated Insights (formerly Home Care Pulse) since 2017 to generate reviews for senior care agencies. Opt in via their system.?

• Caring’s community partners can use Partner Portal to request reviews from many people at once. Find out how here.

Tip: Reviewers do not have to use Caring’s referral services to provide a review (our program isn’t limited to reviews from Caring referrals).?

Ways to Respond to Reviews on Caring.com

To be considered for Caring Stars, you need to respond to the published reviews on your profile.?

Since the beginning years of the program, we’ve required all 1-star or 2-star reviews on your Caring.com profile (reviews of all dates, not just recent reviews) to either have a published response or be contested and removed by the 10/15 deadline.?

For 2025, if you have no negative reviews: you should have at least one response to any review on the profile page. This demonstrates that you’re actively monitoring customer feedback and taking the time to respond to it.?

Here are the 3 main ways to respond to reviews on Caring.com:?

Starting in August 2024, Caring partner communities also have a 4th way to respond to reviews — via Caring Partner Portal.?

For an in-depth understanding of how to effectively contest reviews to have them removed, or for tips on how to optimize your published review responses, please refer back to the tips we provided in March and June, summarized here.?

Don’t be outshined by your local competitors! Take action now to ensure your community or agency is on the Caring Stars 2025 winner list.?

To learn more, please revisit the Time to Shine: Caring Stars 2025 webinar recording or read through the slides. Or contact [email protected] or (650) 762-8190 to reach our team.?