Imagine this: A customer calls your business and leaves a message (along with their name and phone number) about how helpful your sales team was, how much they are enjoying the product they purchased from you, and that they’ve already told 5 friends to shop at your business.
As a business owner, would you call them back and say thanks for the encouraging words? Absolutely.
Now imagine this: Another customer calls and leaves a message (along with their name and phone number) about how disappointed they were with the customer service (or lack thereof) they experienced when visiting your business. They share that they’ve shopped with you for years, but this time they’ve decided to go to your competitor to purchase what they’d originally come into your business to buy.
Would you call them back? You’d better.
It’s not the best part of your job, but you know it’s crucial to make a personal connection with that disappointed customer. You want to try to make it right for them, and also determine what went wrong, so you can make sure another customer doesn’t have the same experience.
Responding to your online reviews is no different.
According to Review Trackers: “53 percent of customers expect a review response within 7 days. But as much as 63 percent say that they have never heard back from a business after leaving a review.”
Google knows how important your response is to someone who leaves a review about your business. That’s why they now send an email to the reviewer letting them know when you post a response to their review on Google My Business (GMB).
Previously, reviewers would need to return to their review on GMB to see what, if anything, you’d posted in response to their review. Now, they get a notification in their inbox letting them know that you’ve responded.
It may seem tedious and time-consuming to post responses to all your online reviews, but it’s an important way to communicate with everyone – reviewers and readers both – that you are paying attention.
For positive reviews, a simple “Thanks for your kind words” may suffice. Anything you can add to make the response personal is a bonus.
For negative reviews, you can bet that if the reviewer wasn’t impressed with your business before, they’ll be even less impressed when they feel that you’ve completely ignored their feedback. We work to take the conversation offline so the customer feels like they are getting the personal attention they deserve. (We know that responding to negative reviews isn’t always easy – we’ve shared some tips about the best ways to handle those.)
Proper response to and management of your online reviews is crucial to your business – even more so now that reviewers are being notified when you have responded to their review. Our Reputation and Review Management program allows our clients to relax, and know that their reputation is in good hands – ours.
