Considering the amount of time, effort and hard work it takes to establish and maintain a successful business, it’s not surprising that most business owners wish they could receive only good reviews from customers, and in great abundance. However, no matter how hard you may try to prevent them from happening through providing excellent products and services, bad reviews do sometimes happen. The good news is that good reviews can help to negate the damaging effects of bad reviews, and if you focus your attention in the right place, you can ensure that online reviews actually match your high quality service.
How to Encourage Accurate Reviews
1. Closely monitor all online reviews regularly, and encourage satisfied customers to provide honest reviews. If you don’t know what your customers are saying about you, it becomes incredibly difficult to figure out where you are succeeding in business and where you are weak. Positive reviews can help to neutralize the damaging impact of negative reviews.
2. Find out exactly where customers feel you should improve your products or services, and work to create and deliver what is needed and wanted. Most customers have an opinion about a product or service, but they may not actually take the time to write an online review. However, these opinions do matter, so it is valuable to collect data through customer surveys immediately after product purchase or receipt of service. You can then address issues as they arise. One thing to bear in mind is that all feedback–including negative reviews–is constructive, if you are willing to listen and respond with genuine care and concern. Immediately addressing a negative review can rapidly turn a critic into an advocate who will be singing your praises to everyone they can.
3. Share customer stories, being sure to highlight the uniqueness of your products or services, and engage with your customers around these stories. Customers appreciate feeling like they are truly valuable, recognized, appreciated and heard. By sharing customer stories that demonstrate the value of your business you will not only connect more deeply with existing customers but also pull new customers into your business.
A business that is routinely engaged with their customers and has an absolute abundance of honest, positive online reviews cannot be harmed by a few bad reviews, especially if they immediately take action to address and resolve the problems outlined in the bad reviews.