Responding to Reviews
You get a good review, and you likely share, share, share. Get a bad one, however, and you’d like to bury it.
Here are some ways how and reasons why you should acknowledge and take action in response to both the positives and negatives consumers share about your business. Whatever you do, however, don’t just ignore them.
Tip: When faced with a negative review, apologize after acknowledging the problem. Leave a public response, but then reach out directly.
Why It Matters
Nearly 7 out of 10 consumers (67%) admit they’re influenced by online reviews, reports Moz (mozilla.org). Online or in print, reviews can affect you in ways you didn’t think.
For, example, do you know that Google uses reviews to determine the order of businesses on local searches? Both the content of the reviews as well as the number of them impact the order of listings on Yelp and Facebook, too.
It doesn’t stop there, however. According to LocaliQ (localiq.com), “Thousands of apps and services use review data to help local shoppers make purchasing decisions. Yelp reviews alone are used by more than 100,000 developers.”
How to Acknowledge
In the case of a positive review, Gartner (gartner.com) offers five suggestions:
- Thank the review for their “kind words.”
- Communicate in a friendly, personalized manner.
- Emphasize what you are doing right.
- Encourage additional engagement by asking questions.
- Invite them to reach out should they need assistance.
Steps to Take
When faced with a negative review, Vistaprint (Vistaprint.com) suggests:
- Apologize after acknowledging the problem.
- Leave a public response, but then reach out directly.
- Remedy the problem as much as reasonably possible.
- If impervious to your attempts to remedy the situation, ask them for a second chance and offer an incentive.
- If that doesn’t work, move on and focus on happy customers.
If the review was extremely negative or included strong language, and you haven’t resolved the situation, only then should you reach out to see if the site will remove the review.
Have you converted a dissatisfied customer into a happy one? If so, tell us about it and share in the conversation on Facebook here.
Erinn Morgan
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