Do retailers need help managing their online reviews?
A host of companies have arrived over the last couple of years offering online review management for businesses looking to increase positive reviews and decrease negative ones.
At $49 a month for a single location, ReviewTrackers, one of the companies in the space, offers:
- Tracking of all major review websites;
- E-mail notifications for new reviews;
- Daily scanning for new reviews;
- The ability to request reviews from customers;
- Customer feedback landing pages;
- A reporting and analytics suite to search and sort reviews.
Most of the services don’t interact with customers or review websites but provide a dashboard to help businesses react and respond more quickly. Some also help retailers set up and manage review sections on their own websites.
ReviewTrackers said it helps small businesses learn from online feedback while managing bad reviews and encouraging favorable reviews to increase ratings. On yelp.com, an increase in one star can lead to a five to nine percent overall revenue increase, according to a Harvard Business School study.
Source: ReviewInc
As far as the dreaded negative review is concerned, Crystal Shuller, director of customer happiness for ReviewTrackers, writes on her company’s blog that businesses can flag false or fake reviews, but removing them is a rare occurrence.
The best response, she writes, is a "kind, caring, and resolution-oriented response" that may encourage the customer who wrote the negative review to give you another chance. Managing and growing an online reputation involves securing a high volume of positive reviews. Ms. Shuller writes, "Review velocity will result in drowning the negative reviews by positioning the bulk of your positive reviews in more prominent locations, when sorted chronologically or by popularity."
Consumers are increasingly using and trusting online customer reviews. A survey early this year from BrightLocal found that 68 percent of U.S. internet users trust businesses more because of positive online reviews. Five years ago, 45 percent of respondents said they either didn’t pay attention to online reviews at all, or didn’t let reviews influence them.
A study from ReviewInc, another online review management firm, found that online reviews (such as on Yelp, Google+ and other review sites) were identified by a survey of 1,000 consumers as the most trusted advertising medium by far. A complementary survey of 1,020 U.S. business owners found that only 11.1 percent of business owners identified online reviews as the most effective advertising medium.
- ReviewTrackers
- Can a Business Owner Delete Bad Yelp and Google Reviews? – ReviewTrackers
- Marketing Mix Investment Gap: Online Reviews – ReviewInc
- 92% of consumers now read online reviews for local businesses! – BrightLocal
- ReviewPush Helps Businesses Take Control of Their Online Reviews – ReviewPush
- ReviewTrust Delivers Fast, Easy and Effective Way to Curate Customer Reviews – ReviewTrust
Discussion Questions
What steps should retailers take to better manage their online reviews? What do you see as the most complex part of the online reputation building process?
Poll
BrainTrust
Retailers need to engage customers in a dialogue. Gone are the days of simply pushing out a new ad and having consumers flock to your store.
The most complex part of online reputation building is committing the time and resources necessary to engage consumers. Services like ReviewTrust can assist by providing analytics, but retailers must generate responses. And those responses must be heartfelt, not an extension of an advertising program.
The old adage is still true, but even more amplified today — If you have a positive experience you maybe tell a friend, if you have a negative experience you shout it out to hundreds on social media networks and review sites.
If there are negative reviews on any source, customers are very interested in whether the company responded and how they responded to any complaint. Crystal Shuller’s comments on how to handle a negative review offer good guidelines in terms of crafting a response.
The biggest challenge in building an online reputation is soliciting positive reviews that are more than a rating with stars. A key strategy is to start the review solicitation at the time of purchase, and then follow up with customers immediately after purchase (within 48 hours).
There will always be negative reviews. The retailer must discern which are whining and which are sincere. They must pay extraordinary attention to those they determine are sincere and TAKE ACTION. That action is twofold. Take action organizationally so that there will never be a complaint like that again. Even more important, address the complaint online and tell the world the solution of how you are going to fix it.
By the way, there is a huge risk to the latter action — if you say you are going to fix it and don’t.
People talk loud about their complaints. People talk louder about their complaints that have been genuinely fixed by the retailer. That becomes a big win.
Hiring a tracking system is just a way to monitor reviews. That’s a start. The big question is, how do you get customers to proactively review you? You ask them to do so.
I remember seeing a sign at the front desk of a hotel. It stated something like: “We strive to make every guest happy. If we do, please leave a review on TripAdvisor.com. If we don’t, let us know so we can fix it.”
This puts the staff on notice that the guests are being asked for review. It is incumbent on the staff to provide the service needed to get a great review, and it tells the guest that they want to deliver a great service experience, worthy of a positive review.
By now, both retailers and savvy consumers understand that not all online negative reviews are legitimate or sincerely submitted for resolution. On several occasions, my company has had experience with direct competitors and disgruntled ex-employees trying to damage its image via posted “reviews,” and unfortunately, this is not rare. Retailers need to solicit and monitor their reviews for many important reasons—and be alert to trends—while also not over reacting when a single damaging complaint appears.
“Do retailers need help managing their online reviews?” YES! Large or small, retailers need to have full-time attention paid to online reviews. There can be a tsunami of bad sentiment and if it isn’t noticed in time, there could be a sales disaster in the making in no time. Building a positive online brand reputation requires a real, consistent commitment. One post every once in while doesn’t create a conversation with your audience. Daily posts need to be the norm and it should not be a daily promotional commercial, because that’s not a conversation, either. Identify the social maven(s) in your organization and share your company’s strategic goals to help guide the online presence development. This is serious business.
A quick anecdotal story: My wife and I went into our favorite Italian restaurant last Friday and they were filming a TV commercial for the local region. I asked the owner about it, and he said, “I’m losing $9k a month here and I need to do something!” I said this TV stuff has got to be expensive, right? He said, “sure, but what else can I do?” SOCIAL!!! I looked at his online reviews and the 60 posted comments were not all great and none were addressed online by the restaurant. That’s a problem. Everyone needs to take this social stuff seriously, whether you personally like to “Tweet” or not.
A company/brand’s word-of-mouth reputation, via review sites and social media, can be one of its most important assets, or a significant consumer detractor. A company’s approach in how they react to reviews can be very telling.
Those most successful in influencing reviews over time are adept in their awareness of where their customers are posting reviews, then engage with reviewers in a responsive, positive manner addressing concerns, issues and problems in a way that seeks resolution. Responsiveness and empathy can take a negative review and soften it in a way that creates consumer respect.
Inviting promoters/advocates to post positive reviews is becoming a common element of voice of customer surveys and can be an effective tool for offsetting the influence of negative reviews. The key is to also be addressing the negatives in a timely and genuine way.
Ultimately, a brand’s online reputation is a reliable barometer of how an organization treats its customers and employees. A retailer committed to being in business for the right reasons, who are genuinely customer-centric and live their values every day will find their online reputation takes care of itself.
Managing reviews online is critical to the success of any retailer now, not just online. Reviews translate to reputation and reputation is quickly becoming “reputation capital.” That’s a term Rachel Botsman used in her Ted talk on a related subject.
The best way to enhance consumer relations is to make positive consumer experience improvements as often as we can. The validity issues that are presently engulfing naysayer social media reports are a long way from being solved by even the best report writers and their software. A better direction, which has been explored by a very few and exploited by none, is to listen more closely to the average customer and the average consumer. Highly competitive support, service and price is the order of reflection all paying and satisfied customers and consumers own as an experience with any and all retailers. With this in mind satisfaction awareness efforts with reasoning to include more of the legitimate market we are serving will lead to more success than feeding our fears.
First, retailers need to get reviews. Even negative reviews are helpful if they are resolved in a timely manner so that shoppers view the retailer as responsive and solution-oriented.
Once retailers have reviews, it’s a matter of displaying them in the right place to leverage their revenue boosting power. Maybe consider having them on a sidebar, instead of at the bottom on the page. Retailers should work hard to get reviews and to not optimize their placement doesn’t do that work justice.
If anything, I think getting the first few reviews is the most difficult. But a little incentive or help from a company like ReviewTrackers can get retailers over that speed bump.
This is an interesting concept, and one that should be analyzed carefully. Ultimately, customers care about two things when leaving a review: 1) that their voices, opinions and suggestions are being heard and responded to, and 2) that actionable changes are made as a result of a complaint or negative review. If a brand hires a company to respond to online reviews, they are tackling the first obstacle of creating a dialog and responding to customers. However, if the feedback isn’t relayed to the brand’s management, there is no way to improve customer service, shipping times, product development or any other element of the brand that led to the customer’s dissatisfaction. In order for this process to work, there needs to be open lines of communication from the customer to review trackers and then to the brand’s management team.