Considering how to acknowledge online reviews is important for businesses across all industries. At the point of fact, 90% of consumers read business answers to online reviews. How should you control the different types of responses for positive and negative reviews? How should you manage response time to affect online reputation?
While some online websites and platforms, like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google, offer you to manage general advice on how to respond to online reviews, answering these questions has until now been far from easy.
To help you to manage responsibility for answering to customer reviews, There are more than 20 million online reviews across the social media four different platforms: TripAdvisor, Expedia, Hotels.com, and Orbitz.
Formed on the analyses of the length and the content of managing responses for each online review, Here are the five principles that can enhance online reputation regardless of platform.
- Principle 1. Acknowledging a positive online review by providing a generic, short response.
Surprisingly, you should find that management needs to be careful even when answering to positive reviews. While a simple “thank you” had little effect, more customized answers— perceived as promotional and hence viewed as disingenuous — negatively impacted future reviews.
- Principle 2. Delay in Answering for positive reviews.
Furthermore, you can reduce the negative impact and respond on time by delaying answers to positive reviews until after the review reaches the second page of reviews.
The delayed answering allows the positive review to be buried behind newer reviews (all online platforms in sample automatically sort reviews from the newest review to the oldest review and are not hit up after a manager responds).
By doing so, you can obtain any direct, positive effects from thanking a reviewer without negatively influencing future reviewers.
- Principle 3. Answering to all negative online reviews.
Negative online reviews affect buying decisions and likely to lead some consumers keeping away from businesses entirely.
To decrease the damaging effect of negative online reviews and the likely loss of an outstanding share of customers, You should engage in answering an online review primarily as a complaint management strategy.
You should respond to a negative online review likely to provide the solution, because a future reviewer can notice past complaint management interactions for a complaint similar to their own.
- Principle 4. Acknowledging a negative online review by giving a tailored solution to a specific complaint.
You should customize answering to each negative review to develop the quality of their complaint management. Specifically, you should communicate and take actions to rectify the problems expressed and maintenance in each negative review.
By acknowledging the reviewer’s issue, you can likely appease an unsatisfied customer and show the following reviewers that the firm cares about customer complaints and problems. Hence, an organization can proactively control service recovery efforts.
- Principle 5. Answering quickly to all negative reviews.
Finally, Your responses to negative reviews should be timely, so that your response is visible to future reviewers.
The faster your response to a negative online review, the faster the reviewer is pacified and potential reviewers can see how much your firm is dedicated to solving customer complaints in a timely manner.
- Reduce the bad, maximize the good.
Customers look forward to independent businesses interacting more with them and they are not surprised when they receive a response to their feedback or comment.
However, responding or answering to reviews in a manner by using those 5 principles improves an independent company’s reputation, and while it will also work for chain businesses.
And following these steps are essential for both independent and chain businesses because responding or answering to reviews is not just about improving reputation, but limiting potential damage.
In an era where customer word of mouth can quickly go viral on social media, these five principles give a proactive approach to service recovery efforts by placing more emphasis on your responses to negative reviews, which helps reduce potential future negative reviews and maximize the benefits of positive reviews.
