Managing Your Business's Online Reputation Requires Constant Management
We recommend these best practices to help maintain ongoing management.
1. Dedicate a Team Member to Maintaining Your Company's Reputation
2. Create a Procedure to collect client feedback.
Customer comments are an important indicator of your company’s quality of customer service, and the most effective method to receive feedback right now is through internet reviews.
Customer feedback, both good and bad, can assist your company in identifying faulty procedures as well as determining who its boosters and detractors are. This is most successful when you have access to this important legitimate input from your existing client base.
The most effective feedback generation programs combine people and technology. In fact, 7 out of 10 consumers will leave a review if:
- They’re asked by a company representative
- It is simple to leave a review
It’s critical that your staff establish a good, consistent habit of asking for reviews from customers and then providing interesting, simple-to-use media for consumers to submit genuine comments and stories that your team can later collect.
3. Get Your Team Involved
Everyone in your company who interacts with customers should be educated on the significance of consumer feedback. This training should cover how good and poor reviews affect a company’s trustworthiness, as well as the immediate and long-term financial consequences of a brand’s online reputation. Customer experience coaching and training is available at Rain Reviews for all of our clients.
From the minute a customer steps into your business, until they depart, your employees should make certain that their customers’ experience will result in positive answers to the following questions:
-Are their needs being met?
-Do they feel they have received excellent customer service??
-How could their experience at the business be improved?
-Would they be willing to write a review of their experience?
Offer Multiple Ways for Customers to Give Feedback
Methods We Recommend for Eliciting Feedback
- Email – Send a follow-up email with a link to a survey or a review-capturing site.
- Text message – Use an automated text with a survey or a live link to a review site. Also, add a custom message code or QR code on the survey.
- Conversations – After you've visited with a customer, train your team to call the client later that day to ensure that everything is satisfactory. The employee at the conclusion of this conversation may request that the consumer submit an online review.
Respond to Every Review
Once a consumer posts a review, it is critical that your company react – and react quickly. Responding to customer reviews and ratings demonstrates your dedication to customer satisfaction and is an important element in developing trust online. Online reviews and star ratings provide social validation that helps customers make quicker judgments. This is backed up by the following compelling stats, which support the importance of cultivated and nurtured reviews:
-Of that 90%, most read at least 10 online reviews, while many read over 20.
-More than 90% of North American consumers read online reviews to learn about a business or practice.
-More than half of consumers say that a business’ or practice’s star rating is almost as important as positive reviews.
-70% of consumers want to see a company responding to their online reviews.
Acknowledge Positive Reviews
What to Do About Negative Reviews?
Naturally, no one likes reading bad reviews or bad feedback. According to a recent poll, 60% of respondents said negative feedback influenced their purchasing decisions. With that in mind, not having any negative reviews is actually detrimental since nearly a third of consumer survey respondents think online reviews are fraudulent if they’re all positive. So keep in mind that all comments are useful for building a trusted brand.
Research estimates that it takes 12 positive experience reports to neutralize the negative impression given by a single unresolved negative experience. However, statistics indicate that if a business responds and resolves an issue quickly, 95% of unhappy consumers return and may even withdraw their negative reviews.
Frequently Asked Review Management Questions
Reputation marketing is critical for businesses looking to grow revenue and attract new customers. To discuss how Rain Reviews can help your business, book an appointment online or call us at (678) 964-7354 today.
