Trustist Blog - How to use Customer Reviews for the Good Insights they Provide

Regular readers of our blogs will know that we are passionate believers in the power of online reviews and how collecting and sharing them online can help to grow your business. Equally, we’re also extremely committed to ensuring that those using a review strategy as a part of their business promotion, respond to the reviews they receive – both negative and positive!?

Quite often, we see businesses who collect reviews choosing not to acknowledge the feedback they receive if it’s positive. Instead, they concentrate their time on responding to negative reviews that are perhaps left.

Whilst responding to negative reviews can really help a business understand where they can further improve, positive reviews are also deeply insightful and, in our opinion, just as important to respond to – even if all you do is thank your customer for taking the time to leave you a review!

Here’s why:

• Building customer loyalty –?According to a recent study by?BrightLocal ,?78% of consumers said that they feel a business cares more about them as a customer if their reviews are responded to, regardless of whether that review is negative or positive
• Attracting new customers –?If a potential customer is undecided about who to purchase from, and they’re reading the online reviews for both your business and your competition, who do you think they are more likely to choose? The business who replied to?all?their feedback, or the business who just replied to the negative ones? They’d go with the business that chooses to take the time to respond and acknowledge everyone, for sure!
• Boost customer retention –?We all know it costs more money to attract and convert a new customer to your business than it does to keep an existing customer. By replying to positive reviews, you’re very clearly demonstrating that you care about your customers’ experience and are proactively encouraging your existing customers to stay with you.
• Building credibility –?Replying to positive customer reviews builds your credibility and can increase your search engine ranking by showing that you’re not just another faceless organisation that’s purely interested in your bottom line. That’s powerful!

How to Respond to Positive Reviews

Most businesses find responding to positive reviews far easier than responding to negative ones. However, it really does require and warrant more than a quick, “thank you”. We suggest making things personal by using the customer’s name wherever possible and finding a genuine way to express your gratitude. Perhaps something like, “Hi Rebecca, thank you so much for taking the time to write such a great review. We really do appreciate it!”

If your customer has listed specific features or benefits that came from purchasing from your business, you could look at repeating a couple of those key points in your response, which thereby proves that you have read their review in detail and understood the strengths of your business.

For instance, “Thank you for your feedback on your experience in our store, Dave! It’s great to read about how our staff served you, and how that made you feel. Your review means a great deal to us and helps us to consistently improve our service for the benefit of customers like you. Thank you for taking the time. It really is appreciated!”

Again, this shows that you’ve invested your time into reading about their experience, understanding what points have been made by the customer, and showing that you care by responding to them. This simple action will help to build stronger relationships with your customers, as well as clearly differentiating you from your competition.\