Reputation management starts with customer reviews. They provide free content and marketing for your brand and help increase your search engine ranking, drive sales, and build credibility.
Positive reviews can create positive signals. But do negative reviews affect your brand reputation? Not necessarily.
Negative reviews play an essential role and can be beneficial if handled correctly. These five tips will help you improve your business by using negative reviews.
Any brand that wishes to manage its reputation should respond to good and critical reviews to avoid making consumers feel as if they’re yelling into a void.
A negative review left by your customer is your responsibility to find a way to make it right. A sincere, empathic response to the original review can go a long way for the customer and as an example to future customers.
It can be challenging to pinpoint where to focus your efforts to improve without critical feedback. When running a business, you must keep track of many moving parts, so a negative review could be the squeaky wheel you need to fix.
The purpose of reading reviews is to find out more about a product or service before making a purchase. Perfection is not needed, but customers do expect authenticity.
An online restaurant review, for instance, might criticize a lack of vegetarian options. Potential customers will decide whether your restaurant is a good fit if that’s a deal-breaker.
That detail won’t matter to others or affect their opinion of your business. Therefore, it is much more valuable to have a lower review accompanied by comments than a perfect 5-star review without any words.
There is more to establishing a recognisable brand identity than your website, logo, and product or service offering. In addition, it’s about developing a voice that connects with customers on a human level. Of course, irrational reviews will always exist, but instead of a copy-and-paste response, it may be an opportunity to show there is a human behind the screen. Precisely that has become the trademark of Wendy’s Twitter account.
It is not true that all negative reviews are reasonable. For example, it is considered unfair if someone leaves a one-star review because your business did not deliver what they expected -even if you never intended to.
As a result, they have judged you based on your ability to sell apples when you have only ever sold oranges.
A few critical reviews don’t mean anything. They are just an indication that you and your business are human. That’s exactly what consumers want.
