Published on July 21st, 2022
Like it or not, customer reviews are an integral part of business life and their impact is enormous. They can be used to promote the brand and increase sales. At the same time, even negative comments can be useful, helping to distribute a product or service.
That’s why business owners tend to include interactive elements for people to submit their feedback or publish comments on external rating platforms using forms or CTA buttons on a website.
Why Have Reviews On The Homepage?
The importance of online comments cannot be overestimated. User reviews are proven sales engines, they are what most customers want to see before buying. You can add them on your site from various trusted platforms, e.g embed Google reviews, as nowadays almost any brand has an account at GMB.
There are so many positive opinions about the impact of reviews on e-commerce that the issue can be considered closed.
The following are statistics from various sources:
- Website visitors are 105% more likely to make a purchase if they read customer feedback and answers.
- Customer comments are considered 12 times more trustworthy than supplier descriptions.
- On average, reviews lead to an 18% increase in sales.
More than six out of ten shopping journeys begin online, according to Think with Google. Also, 94% of business buyers have done online research, and 75% of them have used either reviews or specialized sites.
Buyers Need Reviews: Good And Bad
Despite the numbers, many businesses and marketers are wary of letting the person in the street speak up about their company, product, or service. According to Econsultancy, more than half of businesses still fear the impact negative reviews will have on their reputation.
And this makes sense, because negative comments have a greater impact on sales than positive ones. This conclusion was reached by researchers who analyzed the conversion on Amazon for 591 books and 18,682 customer comments.
But three-quarters of the reviews published on third-party resources are positive. If the customer is unhappy, the situation can almost always be corrected by resolving the problem quickly and efficiently, as this infographic shows.
This makes negative comments potentially useful. By showing everyone your negative feedback, you declare your fearlessness, which in turn inspires the trust of visitors.
It’s impossible to please everyone. And if you show what steps were taken to solve the problem, you can turn a negative review into a positive one.
Dealing With Negative Reviews
What to do if the company received a negative review? And getting it is very simple, because Google hardly filters them.
So, how to respond to a negative customer review:
- Write on behalf of the company. Ask to provide the manager name and order number or contact the quality control manager so that the problem can be solved.
- Confirm that you appreciate the feedback and will work on improving the situation.
The main purpose of these actions is to make it clear to third-party users that you are interested in solving the problem, but objectively doubt the reliability of this particular review.
How To Remove Negativity From Reviews
The answer is simple – do more and better. That is, there should be more positive comments, and their quality should be better.
Google has a rating of users who regularly leave feedback. Thanks to it, the review is ranked higher depending on the rating of its author. It happens that a company may have 10 good reviews, but only 1 bad is shown. Now you know why this is happening.
Account activity is very important. If the review came from an account that was active: left comments, likes, gained followers, then its position will be higher compared to less active users.
Do You Hear The Voice? This Is Your Customer
Companies are spending more and more time and resources evaluating, learning and responding to customer needs as they increasingly make themselves known through the proliferation of various online platforms.
The best Voice of Customer programs offer users personal communication with company representatives in a public form, which allows them to influence existing and potential customers. A properly organized VoC program can be a powerful marketing tool to grow your business.
Companies that implement VoC programs listen to their customers, evaluate and demonstrate the connection between VoC and profitability. They also strive to apply these strategies across all business channels to deliver the best possible customer experience.
Companies should pay attention to:
- Feedback through customer service;
- Customer satisfaction as measured by online research;
- Ratings and reviews;
- Social media monitoring and impact.
Start Listening To Your Customers Today
Do you post user reviews and ratings on your site? And you really should. If you are afraid of what they might reveal, then it is worth asking why you have such fears and try to fix the situation.
If you offer a product or service to the general public and you are not interested in feedback, or at least a rating expressed in numbers, then this will eventually lead to the most unpleasant consequences.
In any case, you will be ranked on other resources: Angie’s List, Yelp, TripAdvisor, not to mention Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, whether you like it or not.
You can at least try to take control of this process by deciding to implement a VoC program, or simply by reaching out to users on social networks and through your site, as well as third-party review sites.
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