Review Management
The process of review management involves monitoring customer reviews that are posted about your brand on websites and social media channels.
In order to cultivate a positive brand image, it is crucial for both small and large businesses to actively oversee, assess, and address all reviews, irrespective of their sentiment. By implementing an effective strategy for managing customer reviews, you can effectively address negative (and fabricated) reviews while also promoting positive feedback.
The importance of online reviews and online reputation management for local businesses
Review management should be practiced by all businesses, regardless of industry and size, as customers find genuine, unfiltered experiences shared by existing and past customers online to be more trustworthy than biased information provided by the business itself, and these experiences are crucial for attracting new customers due to their popularity.
Review management strategy
By following key best practices such as monitoring reviews, responding to customer reviews, and promoting your reviews, you can significantly impact the success of your business. The review management strategy you implement may vary depending on your specific business needs.
- Review monitoring: Practicing review monitoring helps you keep track of your reviews, whether they come from your own Google Business Profile or from any of the numerous review sites online.
- Review response: Responding to customer reviews has become essential as most customers expect their reviews to be acknowledged. We’ll take a deep dive into how and when to respond to reviews in this article.
- Promoting reviews: If you want more reviews, you have to actively seek them out from your customers. Promoting reviews works by requesting reviews from all of your customers so that you can get more and better reviews without waiting for them to come to you.
The benefits of review management
1. Resolve customer complaints and improve reputation
Review management enables you to carefully observe and comprehend the feedback shared by customers regarding your business online, and intervene to address any unsatisfactory encounters as needed.
When consumers read reviews, they will observe that you actively pay attention to their feedback, value their experiences, and will be grateful that you invest effort in resolving issues. This is crucial as consumers pay attention to responses to reviews.
By examining the reviews provided by your customers, you are able to gain an understanding of the general perception your business holds among customers.
By writing reviews, customers frequently provide valuable feedback regarding their experience with your business, which informs your understanding of what your customers genuinely desire. This information can be utilized to identify ways to enhance the customer experience and effectively address the challenges encountered by consumers.
2. Rank better in search results
If you neglect the websites where people write reviews about your business, it can have a negative impact on your customer acquisition and search engine rankings, especially considering that 9 out of 10 people read reviews before visiting a business or making a purchase.
Consumers place more trust in reviews rather than your marketing messages, and this sentiment is shared by Google. Google’s algorithm assesses your company’s level of trustworthiness by analyzing customer feedback.
By receiving reviews from customers, whether they are positive or negative, your company provides Google with information regarding its customer service performance. If your company has recent positive reviews, it is more likely that Google will perceive your brand as a reliable source and enhance its search ranking for relevant keywords.
3. Save time by managing reviews in a single dashboard
Customers leave reviews on various websites, including both general sites like Google and Facebook, as well as industry-specific platforms such as Zocdoc and OpenTable.
Businesses can save time by using a review management software, as it enables them to handle reviews from multiple sites in one dashboard. Consequently, the need to manually sort through and reply to reviews on each individual site is eliminated, resulting in time savings.
4. Boost your marketing with UGC
By actively managing your reviews, you have the opportunity to locate positive reviews and testimonials that can be utilized as user-generated content (UGC) in your marketing strategy. It is worth noting that UGC has a greater impact on consumer purchasing decisions compared to promotional emails and search engine results, according to the majority of consumers.
Why does online review management matter
An effective online review management strategy is necessary for your brand for a few reasons. It goes beyond simply responding to customer comments; it involves comprehending a dissatisfied customer’s grievance, providing a suitable response, and offering a resolution, which is expected by 72% of customers.
1. Handle criticism before it becomes a crisis
If you are not ready, any online criticism from customers can quickly become a crisis, as customers can be harsh. Brands that regularly monitor reviews can promptly address negative customer feedback and easily solve major customer concerns.
2. Ensure that you don’t lose potential customers
Brands (and products) are consistently rated and reviewed by customers online, and before making a purchase, 87% of prospects read those reviews. However, the ineffective management of negative reviews can push away potential customers and lead to low conversion rates. Conversely, positive reviews of your brand can enhance its reputation, draw in potential customers, and enhance your conversion rates.
3. Become a brand trusted by customers
The level of customer-centricity your brand possesses is directly linked to your customer review management strategy, which has an effect on customer loyalty and the likelihood of repeat business. Essentially, when you consistently respond to positive and negative reviews, consumers perceive your brand as reliable and focused on meeting their needs.
What are important review sites
In order to begin implementing a review management strategy, it is necessary to identify the review sites that you wish to prioritize.
In order to thoroughly assess your business, you should conduct an audit of all relevant review websites and ascertain the number of reviews on each platform. During this process, you need to evaluate the quantity of reviews your business has on each site and the level of representation your niche receives.
Some review sites are designed for specific industries. There are restaurant review sites like TripAdvisor and OpenTable. While important for all industries, Google Business Profile is especially crucial for smaller, local businesses.
Examples of healthcare review sites include Zocdoc, WebMD, Google, and Facebook. Similarly, Houzz, Thumbtack, and Homestars are Home Services and Contractor review sites.
Even if you are not actively managing your presence on these sites, reviews will still be left by people. Therefore, it is crucial to determine the most significant sites for your business and actively handle and respond to the received reviews.
Why do you need to monitor your reviews
Once you have determined the review sites that are relevant to your business, it is crucial to keep track of the reviews originating from those sites and other online platforms. The significance of monitoring reviews lies in your ability to respond appropriately to both positive and negative feedback.
Customers desire assurance that their feedback is acknowledged. Upon receiving a positive review, customers value prompt recognition of their effort, even a simple expression of gratitude, such as “thank you,” is appreciated.
In order to demonstrate your concern for customers and address their issues, it is important to promptly respond and resolve any negative reviews. By actively monitoring your reviews, you can effectively tackle potential negative feedback and prevent it from escalating further.
Why should you reply to online reviews
It is important to respond to reviews in order to establish trust and encourage customer loyalty. Whether a review is positive or negative, it is recommended to always provide a response. Responding to reviews is a crucial aspect of building relationships with your customers.
In order to consistently stay on message and brand tone, it is advisable to anticipate and prepare for common feedback from reviews. It is important to have a collection of prepared, suitable responses for recurring feedback. When conducting an audit, it is probable that certain themes will be observed consistently, and these should be recorded.
Replying to reviews demonstrates that you value the experiences of customers and potential customers, and it can also convince dissatisfied customers to alter their perception of your business.
Based on a report, it is stated that 30% of consumers confess to changing negative reviews if their issue has been addressed. Considering the impact reviews can have on a business, responding to these reviews can greatly enhance customer acquisition and retention.
How to respond to customer reviews
To help you respond effectively to negative reviews and minimize potential harm to your brand, consider the following tips.
Could you please rephrase the following text step by step, ensuring that the meaning remains the same? Please do so without adding or removing any information and maintain a polite tone. Original text: “Your behavior towards others shows a lack of respect and consideration for their feelings.” Rephrased text: “Based on how you interact with others, it appears that you may not demonstrate enough respect or consideration towards their emotions.”
When dealing with bad reviews, remember that potential customers are reading them to assess the quality of your service. Therefore, it is crucial to maintain a professional attitude at all times and not take them personally.
Please rephrase the text below while maintaining the same meaning, thinking step by step. Do not add new information and do not remove information. Be timely. Text: Think carefully and methodically, rephrase the following paragraph without changing or omitting any information. Make sure you do it promptly.
It is important to aim for a response to a negative review within 24 hours since delaying for too long could result in the customer’s perception of your brand becoming fixed and unalterable.
Please continue this discussion in private.
To avoid engaging in a public exchange, it is important to include contact information such as an email address or phone number when responding to a negative review.
Provide a step-by-step explanation of how you plan to enhance the overall experience.
In the event that the customer has indicated a particular problem in their review, it is important to clearly outline the actions your team is taking to address the issue. This will demonstrate to potential customers that you are actively engaging with feedback and working towards enhancing the customer experience.
Obtain reviews from every single one of your customers by following a systematic approach.
In order to obtain more balanced feedback, it is crucial to actively request reviews from all of your customers by sending them direct emails and text messages. This is necessary because the customers who tend to voluntarily leave reviews are usually the ones who have had negative experiences.
Review management software enables businesses to easily monitor and respond to reviews across multiple sites, analyze reviews for feedback, promote reviews across various channels, and so much more.
The features of review management software
By having software that speeds up the process of managing reviews, you can continuously stay informed about how customers feel about your company’s services and products. This allows you to quickly identify areas that need improvement and promptly address any pressing concerns in order to retain customers. Such responsiveness and proactivity fosters trust between you and your customers.
It is crucial to be aware of the necessary features for effectively managing online reviews when using review software.
Review monitoring tools
Even the most robust teams would find it challenging to manually monitor reviews across all the different review sites available to consumers, including general sites like Google and Facebook, as well as industry-specific sites such as FindLaw, Zocdoc, and DealerRater, among others.
Centralize reviews into one dashboard
Every day, review management software collects your business reviews from over 150 review sites. It then combines all of your reviews from various platforms like Google, Facebook, and lesser-known user-generated sites into a single, user-friendly dashboard.
Easily organize reviews from multiple sites
You can easily organize your reviews using management software, which allows you to create custom feeds with powerful filters. These filters enable you to access specific reviews based on regions, locations, products, ratings, sources, and employees quickly.
Gain actionable insights
By being able to obtain actionable insights from customer reviews within seconds, you can consider it as the icing on the cake. By identifying trends and delving deeper into customer sentiment, you can enhance your business reputation.
Review monitoring is an essential aspect of any review management software since it consolidates all customer reviews into a single dashboard. This simplifies the overall procedure, enabling swift resolution of customer problems, identification of customer patterns, and enhancement of customer experience.
