Reputation Management 101: Three Mistakes People Make When Responding To Negative Reviews

Negative reviews can be the bane of any company’s existences.  In a world where the right or wrong kind of review can make or break your business, it’s understandable that many managers and employees spend time scouring the web to look for reviews.  There are a lot of Custom Smart Homes reviews, and our experiences with them have taught us a lot on the proper way to handle them.  You’ll see a lot of advice online about the right way to respond to reviews, but you don’t see too much information on how to not respond to your company’s reviews.  If you’re thinking about how you’re going to respond to a negative review, make sure you avoid making these common mistakes.

Responding without saying anything specific

Some people think that generic responses are the best way to deal with customer reviews, but if you want to get a positive response from readers it’s one of the worst things you can do.  A response like, “I’m sorry that you are unhappy with our services.  Please contact us so we can make sure that you have a better experience with our company”, doesn’t address the customer’s actual complaint.  Making a response that could virtually be about any problem shows readers that you’re more concerned about appearing concerned than about actually improving the customer’s experience.

Playing the blame game

When you see a negative review about your business, it’s natural to feel the need to defend your business.  Maybe you remember this particular customer acting rude towards or staff, or maybe you think that the client was confused about what your products and services actually did.  Either way, trying to defend your company by saying that the customer was the one at fault is a bad way to improve your reputation.  Even if what you’re saying is true, people who read your response will wonder why your company seems to want to place the blame on the customer instead of trying to fix the problem.

Responding to every single bad review

If someone is writing a bad review about your company you’re going to want to tell your side of the story, but if you respond to every single negative review you won’t be doing much to help your company’s image.  If you take time to respond to every review, readers are going to wonder why your company is dedicated to finding negative reviews and responding to them.  Your excessive responses could make some readers think that your company is aggressively responding to reviews because you have a lot of unhappy customers.

Tips On Enticing Customers To Write Reviews

Positive reviews can make or break your business, and in today's world reviews play an even bigger role for your potential customer base.  Lizzio Development Group reviews are positive and abundant, but some other businesses aren't as lucky.  A lack of reviews for your business can make it almost invisible in the eyes of the public, so you need to try to get the customers that you already have to share their opinions.  If you want to get more reviews for your business, try following these tips.

Ask a happy customer

Do you have a repeat customer that always sings your business' praises?  Did you recently help a customer with a problem that had been troubling them?  Happy customers are the exact kind of people you want writing your reviews, and when you have someone who is happy with your products and services you should encourage them to write the review. You don't have to make them any lofty promises or go with a gimmick, simply tell them that you're happy that you could help them and that a positive review would be appreciated. 

Use social media

If your company has an account with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or another social media site you could be using your account to help get good reviews.  Plan to do a free giveaway in exchange for positive reviews.  A simple status that says something along the lines of "Leave us a review, once we get 10 reviews we'll be giving away something for free" can be enough to entice people to write a review.  It doesn't have to be something expensive, a free t-shirt or a gift card can be enough to attract people.

Incorporate review requests into communications

Sometimes all people need to get motivated to write a review is a friendly reminder.  If your customers are part of an e-mail newsletter, put a few sentences at the bottom of each email you send that kindly asks customers for reviews.  Put a few links on your website that direct them to a contact us form so your customers can easily submit a review.  A gentle reminder that you need and appreciate reviews can be all you need to get them.

Three Things To Avoid When Trying To Get Ratings and Reviews

Sometimes the sleekest ad campaigns and marketing techniques are no match for good PR from your customers.  At Custom Smart Homes reviews and ratings play an important role in improving our services and getting other potential customers.  There are a lot of businesses that try to get their customers to write ratings and reviews, but there are some seemingly helpful things you can do that end up doing more harm than good.

Avoid Over Using Incentives

A lot of businesses offer their customers something in return if they write up reviews and rate their business.  This may seem like a good way to get your customers to offer their opinions, but if you want genuine reviews you should avoid relying on incentives.  There are quite a few of your loyal customers that would be more than happy to write a review for your business, and their answers won't be affected by whether you're giving them free things or not.  A free item or service once in a while can be a great way to drum up some reviews, but if you rely on it too much you won't get the kind of genuine reviews and ratings that you want.

Avoid Pushing Yelp

Yelp is one of the most trusted consumer review and rating sites around, and there isn't a business owner in 2013 that doesn't want to have a Yelp profile that's full of positive reviews.  You may feel tempted to encourage your customers to go on Yelp and write a positive review for your business, but having your customers sign up for Yelp to post one review can hurt you in the long run.  Yelp spam filters usually remove reviews that are posted from inactive accounts, so your customers will be doing work for nothing.  If you have some regulars that are dedicated Yelpers trust them to do it on their own.

Avoid Posting Responses Right Away

Promptness is an important factor in customer service, but you should let a little time pass before you or an employee responds to a negative review or rating.  A lot of rating and review websites operate like a forum, and anybody is free to register and offer their opinions about a poster's review.  A lot of businesses have their own accounts on these websites so that they can publicly respond to their customers who have given them negative reviews.  If done properly this can be an excellent way for you to show your customers that you care about their opinions, but if these are written in the heat of the moment you may not come across as you'd like to.  A little bit of time can do a lot to help take the emotion out of a situation and provide a lot of clarity on the best way to respond.

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.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Customer Reviews

A little listening goes a long way

Whether you're reading negative reviews online or talking to an unhappy customer, dealing with complaints about your business can be difficult to hear.  Complaints are an inevitable part of doing business, and the ways that companies handle caring for their dissatisfied customers can tell you a lot about their business practices.  When you visit CustomSmartHomes.com you can read glowing reviews from their customers who love their new eco-friendly smart homes, and all Custom Smart Home reviews the company receives are used to improve their services so they can better satisfy their customer's needs. 

It's important to acknowledge problems and make sure that customers are happy with their products and services.  Customer reviews can give both business owners and their employees important information about how their customers view their products and services, and could even show you some creative ways for your to improve your business.  Here are some tips businesses can follow to ensure that they can get truly get the most out of their customer reviews.

Listen

Many employees working in customer service are quick to start speaking to unhappy customers about how the company will handle their problems.  Their immediate reaction could help reassure customers that their problems will be quickly dealt with, but it's more likely to make them feel like your company doesn't want to listen to their customers. Tell your employees to listen to customers before they begin talking about how your company can fix their problem.  Your customers will feel like the company cares about individual customer needs, and your employees will be better equipped to solve your customer's problems.

Look for Patterns

Does it seem like complaint amounts double during a certain time of year, or that a certain department always seems to receive more complaints than others?  Those aren't mere coincidences, if you're seeing the same problems popping up in the same areas it's time to focus on improving your business practices.

Don't Ignore Certain Complaints

When you have a customer that seems to do nothing but complain it can be easy to write them off as being difficult or overly picky.  But it's important to examine every customer complaint, regardless of how many times you've heard it before. Regardless of who is making the complaint or what the complaint is about, you need to regard it as a legitimate problem and work hard to fix it.