Your online reputation is very important for your business because this is the first thing many customers will look at before working with you. Online feedback can be very difficult to manage, however, because sometimes complaints or criticisms are unreasonable or possibly undeniable.
In this blog, we consider how you can foster a good online reputation and how to deal with any negative reviews you do receive:
Why it matters
Good feedback matters because this is what makes up your star rating. On Google, Facebook and Yelp you will be rated out of 5 stars and customers use this to determine who they want to work with. If there is a choice of someone with 4.5 stars and someone with 2.5 stars and the businesses are otherwise similar in terms of price, no one is ever going to pick the lower rated business.
Fostering good reviews
The first important step is to foster good reviews and take opportunities to ensure that you get them. Ask pollitely for a postive review and it will help increase your overall rating. Replying to these bits of positive feedback is also very important because it will help you to increase the profile of them.
Take testimonials where you can and share your positive feedback to make it more prevalent.
Dealing with negative feedback
Negative feedback is unfortunately inevitable and the internet makes it disproportionately difficult to ignore such feedback. On every 5 star rated company there will be one or two one star reviews that have developed from a bad experience.
Regardless of the reason, reviews need to be dealt with in a positive manner. There are three steps you can take to deal with negative feedback positively:
1. Learn from it
Taking negative feedback and learning from it gives you the opportunity to grow and develop as a business. You should reply to the feedback acknowledging the dissatisfaction and explaining the steps you are taking to improve.
2. Hear it
Listening to the feedback and thanking the customer is another good way to react. Hearing the customer out and responding with thanks can help them to feel better about their grievance and shows that you are willing to hear all feedback.
3. Own it
The final way to react is by taking ownership of something. If someone has a problem with the way you do things explain why you do it that way. Oftentimes, the explanation will show the customer that your actions are carried out because of practicality and not malice as they wanted to believe.
Conclusion
Positive feedback is important but it should not be an overwhelming consideration. Focus on offering a good service and give reasonable replies to complaints.
With good service, you will be able to maintain a positive reputation overall. If you need help or assistance in increasing your online reputation and positive review count, check out our review and reputation managment service.
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