Why your business needs online reviews
1) Potential customers can tell if your business is filtering your online reviews
According to Ecoconsultancy, 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores. Online customers are more savvy than ever and can spot when things look too good to be true. Indeed, 95% of consumers suspect censorship or faked reviews when they don’t see bad scores (Reevoo, 2015).
2) You’ll lower trust levels if you only have good online reviews
Webrepublic have stated that 30% of consumers assume online reviews are fake if there are no negative reviews. If you’ve only received five star reviews for your business, customers will know your manipulating them and can assume that it’s because your hiding something.
3) Give your customers a voice and show that you care
If you don’t allow or encourage reviews, your customers that have something to say, whether that may be positive or negative, will find it strange. It’s much better to be able to respond to a negative review to show that you care about your customer experiences than have them leave reviews on unverified listings and profiles.
If your business doesn’t allow for feedback, it appears to customers that you don’t really care about them or value customer service. If customers can’t expect good service, don’t expect them to want to visit your business. Customers like to see businesses that are open to feedback and especially the businesses that are listening enough to try to win customers back.
5) Give your business a chance to win back business
If a review isn’t published, customers can feel frustrated. If you let your customer down and they leave a review, this is an opportunity for you to win them back. By responding sympathetically and providing solutions, the customer’s experience will feel less negative and in turn, could help them give you another chance.
6) You’re missing out on opportunities to improve
While customers can sometimes be difficult with unrealistic expectations, others can help you improve on potential oversights. There is also room for improvement, and by listening to those who matter the most - the customer - you can only improve their experience.
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Review Management - Best Practices
We make online review management easy.
Why your business needs to stop removing reviews:
1) People can tell your business is filtering the reviews.
68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores (Econsultancy, 2012). Customers are a lot more clued up now and are able to spot the difference between real and fake reviews - in fact, 95% of consumers suspect censorship or faked reviews when they don’t see bad scores (Reevoo, 2015).
2) It can look like your business has something to hide.
30% of consumers assume online reviews are fake if there are no negative reviews (Webrepublic). Only 8% of consumers expect a business to have a 5-star rating before they will consider using them (Brightlocal, 2016). If there are only five star reviews on a review site, customers will know that your business controls its reviews and will assume it’s because you’re hiding something
3) It looks like your business doesn’t value customers enough to win them back
If your business doesn’t allow or encourage feedback, it appears to customers that you don’t really care about them or value customer service. If customers can’t expect good service, don’t expect them to want to visit your business. Customers like to see businesses that are open to feedback and especially the businesses that are listening enough to try to win any customers back that may have had a bad experience.
4) It doesn’t give your business an opportunity to win back customer trust
If a review isn’t published, it can be very infuriating to customers. If your business did fail the customer, it gives you a chance to win them back. Since your business is responding to the reviewer publicly, your business can possibly win them back as well as show other customers that you care about how you treat your customers. Customers and potential customers will respond well to that.
5) You could be missing out on valuable feedback to improve.
While customers at times can be unrealistic with their expectations from a business, some can provide feedback on possible oversights. Oversights happen to the best of us and there is always room for improvement. Listening to your customers may help improve certain aspects of your business moving forward!
Here are the situations when it is acceptable for your business to filter out which reviews are published:
1) When the review contains graphic material or inappropriate language
If the review is inappropriate, contains explicit language or graphic material. Fortunately, many review sites are all over this, but if they happen to miss it, you can flag it as inappropriate.
2) When reviews are irrelevant to your business.
If a review doesn’t provide any mention or context to your business, products or services. Sometimes customers leave reviews but they really want to ask a question. If it really doesn’t add context as a review from a customer, it is okay to suppress that review.
3) When reviews are spam or someone is plugging another business
If a review isn’t related to your business but is obviously spam, or if a person starts talking about their business instead of you business.
4) When the review is a fake or planted by a competitor you know it
In the case of review fraud, it is completely acceptable to suppress the review and remove it.
Unfortunately, reviews have been used as blackmail and this sort of unsavoury behavior does occur. The fact that this behavior is on the rise further highlights the importance of practising review management and using reputation management software.
Please don’t review your own business - Again, customers and potential customers will be able to tell that you’re self-reviewing from a mile off! No one will write such lengthy and in-depth reviews about a business, so please let any reviews be from your customers!
Here’s how your business can practice white-hat review management:
- Provide exceptional customer experiences
- Ask your customer to leave a review (in store signs, surveys, etc)
- Read and analyse the review. Does it meet the criterion to suppress or remove?
- If yes, remove and you are done managing the review
- If no, the review stays published
- Respond to the review
- If the review is positive, thank them for their feedback
- If the review is negative, try to move the conversation offline. Try to remedy the situation to win the customer back. If you have remedied the situation, try asking them to adjust their review. If not, then at least the customer may come back.
Why it’s best to take the review management high-road?
At the end of the day, people can tell that if your business is grooming your reviews if all of your reviews are too positive. From a consumer’s perspective, it is better to see a business with a mix of reviews, mostly positive but with some negatives as well, we are all human after all! So long as a business is trying to remedy the situation by responding to the customer and following the proper review management protocols, it actually says more about the business than a business with all perfect five star reviews.
Find out more about our review management service and how it can help grow your business, book a consultation now.
How to respond to negative reviews
Believe it or not, the same premise applies to negative review response as it does to positive reviews. The way you respond to negative reviews can highly impact not only the reviewer but all of your other potential clients that come afterward.
Don’t let a negative review worry you too much, as 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores. We are all human and can relate to human errors that may occur in day to day life, causing a negative experience with certain customers. Your potential clients will empathise with this - it’s all about how you handle that negative review.
Seeing a business handle a particularly challenging review online well, shows that they are proud of their business and that they maintain customer service to a high standard even past the point of sale. They are willing to go the extra mile to preserve their reputation!
Consumers will tell an average of 42 people about a good customer experience and 53 people about a bad customer experience - if you handle this correctly, you can definitely control any possible damage. You can make potential clients see the best of you with these four easy steps: apologise, promote, get offline, keep it simple.
How to respond to negative reviews:
- Apologise and sympathise
The first and most important step towards fixing a problem is acknowledging that one occurred. Regardless of what happened, a simple apology and sympathy for your customer’s experience goes a long way - 7 out of 10 consumers changed their opinion about a brand after the company replied to a review (Bazaarvoice via Marketing Charts, 2013) - Promote
So your famous pancakes weren’t up to par the day this particular customer visited. If they’re what you are known for, why not reiterate that? “Our pancakes are usually a hit, we’re sorry to hear that they weren’t up to par when you visited!” Continue the conversation offline
Offer the reviewer a chance to discuss their issue further via email or phone. You want to avoid a back and forth conversation on your reviews! - Continue the conversation offline
Offer the reviewer a chance to discuss their issue further via email or phone. You want to avoid a back and forth conversation on your reviews! - Keep it simple
Refrain from specifics and don’t ask questions. Those conversations are much better served in a space away from the prying public, therefore, again try to move the conversation offline.
One last pro tip: leave your business name, location and category out of this. You don’t want your negative reviews showing up in search!
Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? We can provide you with software to pull in your reviews from all over the web in order to help you respond quickly. If you don’t have time, seek out Digithrive's services to do it for you. Not only do we guarantee expertise, but we also guarantee it in a hurry: we respond to reviews as soon as our software pulls them in!
This is why your business should want more reviews on review sites.
Find out more about our review management services and how it can help grow your business, book a consultation now.