Customers read reviews of vendors, products, or service providers before making a purchase. Actually, eighty-six percent of customers hesitate to buy services or products from businesses with bad online reviews. Reviews and review management tools are a bigger part of your business online reputation and greatly impact your success.
Online reputation management is amazing and refers to influencing, monitoring and building your brand’s virtual status. It shapes the public perception of your brand and helps establish belief for services and products. If you want to grow your little business, creating customer self-belief and maintaining a positive internet reputation is key toward your success.
Request reviews from customers
First off, before you can successfully handle your online review management, you need to ensure your business has sufficient reviews. There are lots of ways to get customer feedback. You can request feedback in person, via email, over the phone, on your site, or from vendors and suppliers. Whatever route you pick, ensure to accept all feedback, regardless of whether it is the best comment or a bad review. Bear in mind that buyers are smart and can identify a real review from a false testimonial. Buyers can also find that reviews that are all best might be doubtful.
To get more reviews
- Ask permission from your clients to turn their feedback into internet statements.
- Make phone calls to past customers and ask them if they could share their experience on your site.
- Send an email review request to previous customers with whom you have had transactions.
Respond to reviews
There will forever be neutral, positive, and bad customer reviews, but a negative one does not necessarily mean bad for your business. If you know how to address this kind of feedback, it actually provides your business a sense of honesty. Regardless of whether the comment or review is positive or negative, answering customer reviews is the best way to show that you care. Here are some tips when responding to comments:
- Do not reject any review, and try to reply as soon as you can.
- Go to review sites like Yelp or Google and check local business listings where customers can leave feedback. Many times business owners are not alert that their business is listed on these websites and people are leaving reviews.
- Do not hide bad feedback. Instead, provide a sympatric response recognizing the customers’ feelings.
- Do not argue with bad comments. Be an issue solver to address customer concerns and identify with them.
Consider your tone in responses
You cannot please every person. If you are in business long enough, there will be bad reviews no matter how hard you try to offer the best service. Behaving like and expert is vital when answering reviews on websites or business directories or using white label review management software to get the best result. Keep you chill and have a kind tone to defuse the effects of bad reviews, both for the customers any possible customers who read the review and your feedback.