Your Online Reputation
Now that we have explored online reviews quite thoroughly, let us learn how we can manage our online reputation.
Firstly, a business with very few reviews online is going to be something of an unknown quantity. More risk-avoidant customers may not notice your business if it doesn’t have enough reviews. Small Business Trends reports that having at least 50 reviews creates a conversion rate of 4.6%. Since a plurality of people surveyed only read about 4-6 reviews in all before trusting a business, according to Invespcro, if customers read that many reviews and see a good overall rating, they are much more likely to buy from you than if you only have 6 reviews in total, even if your rating in the actual reviews is very good. Stated another way, it may, in some customers’ eyes look better to have an average of 4.2 stars as rated by 50 people, than an average of 4.6 stars rated by 15 people. Searching “Social Buzzing Reviews” will show you a page of a social media company Marlow with an average of 4.9 stars rated by 7,150 people.
If you don’t have enough reviews written about your business, it will help you to encourage staff who interact directly with customers to encourage those customers to leave a review. Customers who display obvious happiness at the service are probably the best ones to ask. It is best to leave this task up to staff who are well trained and skilled in customer service.
A single negative review, on average, ends up costing your business 30 customers, and can only be counteracted by 5 positive reviews. If you find a negative review about your business, the best thing you can do is to respond gently and courteously, and if necessary, correct any direct inaccuracies. You may not end up being able to satisfy an angry reviewer, but other people visiting the site will see that you have made the effort to reach out to the dissatisfied customer, which helps to reinforce your brand as having good customer service. Small Business Trends reports that a third of upset customers actually end up deleting their negative review if a business responded. This teaches us something very important about human nature – no one likes to be ignored. Further, just under a fifth of people who left negative reviews went on to become regular customers. This indicates that, wherever possible, businesses should improve their customer service to the point that people do
No Comment