What Business Owners Need to Know About Online Reviews

You can spend millions of dollars on marketing your business, but if online reviews for your brand are negative, all that effort will be for naught.

Online reviews, written by customers, are becoming the most important tool in a potential shopper’s research process. In fact, seven out of 10 customers say online reviews frequently influence their purchase decisions.

If you’re not paying attention to your brand’s reviews, you might be missing out on the opportunity to improve your business and increase sales.

Why Online Reviews Matter

With so much chatter on social media and so many ads being slung in the direction of consumers, it can be hard to know what to trust. Naturally, a brand will put itself in the best light, which means that anyone seeking information about a brand or product may struggle to get a real sense of what it’s like through normal channels.

But customers are honest, and if they don’t like a product, they’ll be vocal about it. 

If a customer had a bad experience with your brand, their online review is there for anyone searching to see. Negative reviews could be thwarting you from earning more business, which is why it’s important to stay on top of what people are saying about your brand online.

Handling Negative Reviews

Someone who had a negative experience with a brand is likely to tell nine to 15 other people. That’s not even counting how far-reaching their review online could be. While you can’t undo a negative review, you can use it as an opportunity to fix the situation and respond to the customer.

Regularly review online review sites that have a profile for your brand. When you see a negative review, read it with an open mind. Understand that, generally, the customer isn’t trying to destroy your business but rather is voicing his or her frustration about an experience.

Take the feedback you receive to heart. Find a way to amend the situation. At the very least, respond to the comment (most review sites allow the business to respond) with a heartfelt apology. Invite the customer to contact your company to receive a refund, exchange the product, or even get a complimentary product or experience as a way of saying thank you. Oftentimes, people reading review sites also read the company’s response, and sometimes, even a negative review that’s handled well won’t keep them from shopping with you.

How to Get More Positive Reviews

Sadly, people who had a negative experience with your brand are more likely to leave feedback than those with a positive one. Still, there are things you can do to encourage customers to write positive reviews.

If you have a physical store, invite customers to leave a review when they make a purchase with you. Drop your business card with the review sites you’d like them to use. These might include Google, Facebook, and/or Yelp.

If you sell products online, include the card when you ship the order, and follow up a week after the product arrives with an email including the link (make it as simple as possible) for them to leave a raving review.

If you provide services, follow up with a phone call to check in with your customer. If they’re happy, tell them you’ll send an email with a link where they can share their praise in a review.

Staying On Top of What People Are Saying

While many people use the review sites I mentioned above, others use social media as a channel to vent about an experience with a brand. That can make things a little trickier to track, especially since you have other responsibilities in your business!

Consider investing in online reputation management software. These platforms help you track any mention of your brand across multiple channels, including review sites and social media. They allow you to respond in real-time, rather than only occasionally when you take the time to manually search for your brand’s online reviews. You can respond to negative feedback quicker and resolve issues faster, which means other customers will see your prompt response and want to buy from you or engage your services.

Some of these platforms also allow you to get customer feedback, request reviews, and get reports on brand sentiment.

Using Online Reviews to Make Your Brand Better

No one likes hearing criticism, and that includes brands. But really listening to the feedback that customers provide in online reviews gives your brand a fantastic opportunity to improve.

If you’re using online reputation management software, look at trends over time. Are people complaining about the wait time to reach a customer service representative on the phone? The quality of your products? If you see issues that come up again and again, this is a sign it’s time to deal with the issue.

Make the necessary changes to whatever the issue is. If it’s long wait times, hire more customer service reps and/or add technology that makes it easier to reach someone through phone, email, or chat (chatbots can automate many chat functions and cut down on the number of humans you need).

If it’s a quality issue, go back to the drawing board and see how you can improve your products. Maybe you need to look at a supplier that can provide better-quality products, or you might need to reengineer how it’s made.

After you make the change, continue to monitor online reviews and note if this issue decreases or disappears. If so, pat yourself on the back and move on to the next issue.

Tips for Success

Monitoring online reviews isn’t a one-and-done task. It’s something you’ll need to do continually to ensure that customers are happy and that negative reviews aren’t crippling your ability to attract new customers.

Never, ever respond angrily to an online review. Yes, sometimes customers leave rude reviews, and sometimes may even conflate the truth. But remember that people are reading your response, so you want to make sure you’re responding calmly and professionally. 

Consider hiring someone to focus on reputation management. That way, it’s not a task on your long list of things to do, and that person can respond instantly to issues.

Look at online reviews as an opportunity to do better. Customer satisfaction should be a top priority for your brand, and responding to reviews, as well as making changes for the better, should increase your customers’ happiness.