The Positive and Negative Aspects of Online Business Reviews

The perils of online reviews

There's no asset that's more important to a business than the ratings and reviews from their customers.  Potential new customers seek out the opinions of past customers to see if a company is worthy of their business, and they also give companies insight into what their customers think about their products and services.  Businesses like Custom Smart Homes use their ratings and reviews to learn more about their customers and develop possible ways to improve their practices.  Before businesses had to wait for phone calls and letters from customers to learn about their customer's experiences, but now thanks to advances in technologies it's very easy to learn about the opinions of others.

The Internet has given millions of people an open forum for communicating their thoughts and ideas, and countless people rely on online reviews for information about excellent products and services.  Opinions about businesses can be found in almost every news story, social media post, and forum discussion online.  The internet can be a great learning tool, but all of the information found on it can't be trusted as valid, especially if it’s a customer rating or review of a business.   

Ratings and review websites can be helpful for learning about a business’ true practices, but occasionally bad reviews can be based on a misunderstood and bad experience.  Some customers may have been confused about what they were getting, and others simply may not have picked to work with a business that best suits their needs.  There are also some people with grudges against business that try their hardest to ruin their reputation online.  They'll spend time writing negative reviews about things that never happened, or about experiences that were greatly exaggerated in order to make a business look bad. 

As you can see, people who rely on ratings and reviews websites to learn about businesses have to take everything they read with a grain of salt.  Both good and bad reviews have the potential to misrepresent a company, so it's important for people to spend time doing research that isn't biased with other people's views.  Before you start believing every review you see, take time to consider the facts about a business’ practices and make decisions on your own.