How to Manage Online Customer Reviews

Managing a business’s online reviews is paramount for a good reputation and can help improve its image.

Potential customers are relying on review sites to research their purchasing decisions. A recent survey stated that 86% of consumers read reviews of local businesses online. Therefore, it is critical to be aware of what your customers are saying about your business and to respond proactively.

While you may be wary of the effort required to manage reviews, not doing so can create a bad reputation - something you might not even be aware of. The task gets much easier and requires a small amount of effort once your routine is established.

You can start with a few initial steps and then cultivate a habit of monitoring and managing your reviews consistently. This helps you ensure that your company is well represented and that you can take advantage of online reviews to improve your business.

Know your reputation

You can take some steps to investigate your own online reputation and establish a good foundation for review management:

1. Search for your company: Enter your company name in the search engine to see its position and what the conversation is about your business.
2. Monitor review sites: You need to see if your company has a profile page on major customer review sites, as well as industry-specific sites. If it does, then claim it and update it with the correct information. If not, create one.
3. Analyze your reviews: Go through the existing reviews of your company on these sites and configure your approach for responding to them.
4. Respond to recent reviews: It is ideal to respond to reviews immediately after they’re posted.

It is important to respond to your reviews - its shows that you care about your customers.

Respond to reviews

Responding to reviews gives you the opportunity to address any issues and share your side of the story if required. The way you respond and the timeliness of your response matters immensely.

Some tips for responding to reviews are:

• Represent your business positively

  Your brand voice needs to be clear and consistent in your responses. Always remember to be professional and respectful. Write your responses well, as prospects will learn a lot about your business from them.

• Show gratitude for positive reviews

  Don’t just focus on dealing with negative reviews; Ensure that you thank those who took the time and effort you give you a positive review.

• Respond thoughtfully to negative reviews

  You might be tempted to go on the defensive when faced with a negative review, but it is more advantageous to appreciate the effort the customers took to write a review. You must strive to understand their perspective and express this understanding. It is best to respectfully share your side of the story, particularly if there are differences between what was mentioned in the review and what really happened. If the review is accurate, you should consider explaining how you’ll fix the situation for the customer so that this negative experience is not repeated.

• Don’t engage with trolls

  It’s best to not engage with trolls who take pleasure in randomly harassing others online. You can even report such users to the website moderators.

• Report false reviews

  You can also alert the website moderators about any obviously false reviews so that they can address these issues.

Monitor and Manage

After taking the above steps, your regular process should be just the straightforward monitoring and management of new reviews. Some tips for going about this are:

• Create search engine alerts for mentions of your company name to know when you are mentioned online. This will help you find reviews on sites you are not checking and reveal other types of social media chatter about your company.
• Designate a person or a team to regularly check for new postings on review sites. There is a possibility of setting up alerts on most such sites, but it is best to proactively visit and monitor them.
• Use the tips mentioned above to respond to reviews.
• Ask satisfied customers to post reviews. Upset customers are the most likely to post a review than happy customers. You may also have many happy customers who are willing to share their positive reviews - you just need to ask them to do so!

While it may be intimidating to examine your reviews and the chatter about your company, giving the right responses and proactive attention can help you establish a consistent and positive reputation. Reading customer feedback - both positive and negative - helps you learn what you’re doing right already and what’s not working as intended.

Learning from this feedback and having this approach to reviews will reflect well on your business.

How can Interics IN-DIGITAL help?

Interics IN-DIGITAL is a division of Interics Designs - a digital branding agency - that can formulate the right approach for responding to reviews, and carry out effective brand reputation management for your business.

Why go with Interics IN-DIGITAL?

Interics IN-DIGITAL is a storied social media optimisation agency, SEO agency and lead generation agency. As a leading digital marketing agency in India, Interics IN-DIGITAL has the team, skills and experience to deliver effective social media strategy for brand reputation management and lead generation; plan and execute content marketing strategy and build brand awareness through digital marketing.

Through a tailor-made combination of Content Strategy, Social Media Strategy, Digital Advertising, Website Design and more, Interics IN-DIGITAL customizes solutions for effective brand reputation management, powerful digital brand experience and quantifiable brand impact.

Visit www.intericsdesigns.com to learn

Interics Digital is an interactive digital design and user-experience agency, specializing in multi-product marketing service creations.