We’re all customers and we’re all looking for the best experience. Certainly, as a customer, I always want the best possible service or product I can find for what I need. Whether I’m booking a holiday, looking for somewhere to eat or buying a book, reviews play an important part in my decision making.
A bad review can sway a customer’s decision one way or the other; even if a review is unfair or over the top, people will take it at its word. This is because we trust other customers’ points of view, as we know it won’t be far from our own.
Customer loyalty can hang in the balance because of the trust customers have in the reviews that populate sites like Trip Advisor, Reviews.co.uk and Google Reviews. These sites group together reviews and can form lasting opinions about businesses.
It’s not just individual review websites that have a telling influence. Most businesses will have a platform that allows people to review them. It can often be the first place customers go to once they have found the product or service they are interested in.
Friends, family, and co-workers, all use their voice to have an influence over our opinions and trust in companies, and no matter who you are, your voice can have a big impact on people’s decisions.
Companies have no control over word-of-mouth reviews, and this makes it so much more important to make sure you are handling reviews in the public eye in the right way. Once a review has been published there is nothing you can do about it. It’s about how you react that really counts.
Here are eight tips on how to handle customer reviews.
You should…
1. Respond as soon as possible: No matter whether the review is positive or negative, make sure you get back to the customer swiftly. If it’s a positive review, thank them to show you appreciate the time they took to say something nice. If the review is negative, you should be responding no matter what to solve the issue at hand. Tell them that you take it seriously and that you’ll be in touch over the phone or email.
2. Monitor your platforms: Reviews don’t just appear on your website or in your email box, they are spread out across social media in the form of Facebook posts, tweets, or maybe even an Instagram picture. So, it’s key to make sure you are monitoring your social media platforms to avoid missing out on reviews.
3. Encourage more reviews: After a customer has left a review, you should encourage them to write more in the future about your products or services. It will help you to learn more about that customer and help to form a feed of reviews which keep you updated on how your operations are running.
4. Make it personal: Sending out a generic and ready-made response to all your reviews looks lazy and tells your customers that you don’t really care about what they have to say. So make sure you are reading each review and responding to it on its own merits. It’s also not just about what you say, it’s about how you say it. If it’s a particularly disgruntled customer, try responding to them over the phone or via email where possible. It shows that you are taking the time and care to get back to them in a more personal way.
You shouldn’t…
5. Disregard negative reviews: It might be okay to close your curtains to ignore the rain but when it comes to a negative review, pretending it’s not there won’t make things any better. Turning a negative into a positive can be a tricky process, but replying to a complaint with a solution can go a long way to achieving it.
6. Influence reviews: It’s good to encourage reviews to evaluate your products and services, but don’t try to influence customers into leaving positive reviews in order to look good online. It isn’t being honest with your customers or yourself. You may miss valuable information which can help your business to improve if you try to influence your customer’s views.
7. Blame the customer: You may think the customer is being a little unfair or harsh on a certain aspect of your business, but some customers are not as easy to please as others. You should always treat each customer as an individual and live up to their standards, not set an expectation you think all your customers should conform to.
8. Make false promises: Of course, you should be looking to resolve the customer’s issue, but don’t go overboard and start making false promises which you can’t keep. You may think that this is a good way to please the customer, but it’s only a short-term resolution. If you break promises you have made to your customer, you are only going to upset them further. By all means, promise to do all you can, but never promise the world.
If you need advice or guidance on how to manage your online reviews, then one of the social media marketing packages from Balls2 Marketing is for you. Contact us to find out how we can help.
