Today’s Tip
Best Practice: Your brand is being measured online every day. Protect and grow your brand by responding to reviews.
Today’s Article: Respond to Reviews – Especially Negative Ones
Your brand is being measured online every day. Protect and grow your brand by responding to reviews.
Responding to general and positive reviews promotes greater customer satisfaction, loyalty and word of mouth business. Responding to a bad or negative review better protects your online reputation and minimizes the review’s negative impact.
One of the most important reasons to respond to comments is that everyone else is reading them. Many people do not comment themselves, but they read the comments of others.
According to Inc, online reviews can make or break your business. 88 percent of U.S. consumers read reviews posted on sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google, and Facebook in order to determine whether a local business is good or not. Moreover, 74 percent read anywhere between 2 to 10 online reviews before making a purchase decision.
Action Steps:
1. Claim your free business listing on business relevant review sites. Once your listing has been verified, you will have the ability to take control and post responses to reviews.
2. Respond to each review whether it is positive or negative. Simply start off by saying, thank you for your feedback. By doing this a business shows, to existing and potential customers, that customer feedback is valued. According to travel review site Trip Advisor, businesses that respond to reviews enjoy 17 percent higher levels of engagement–and are 21 percent more likely to receive a booking inquiry–than those who don’t respond.
3. Be brief – keep it simple.
4. When possible personalize the feedback. “Dear Susan, we are happy that you liked the service we provided and thank you for your feedback”.
5. Solve the problem. If it is a negative review, start to defuse the situation by saying something like this – “ Dear Tom we are sorry you had this experience, please call us so we can discuss your experience.” Commit to providing a better experience next time such as “We are reviewing how this happened to improve the experience and we hope you’ll give us a second chance.”
6. Have the right person respond to reviews. Look at best practices in responding to reviews. Have a clear policy about responding to reviews and be consistent.
7. Keep a record of all reviews and feedback. Review with your team daily, weekly or monthly as a continuous business and brand improvement strategy.
Note: People have always commented about businesses. Now you have a better way to know about them and respond to them.
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