Online reviews arevital for a business’s success. However, traditional logic dictates that good reviews equal more business, while bad ones’ drive customers away. Yet, when considering yourself as a consumer you may identify that bad reviews are actually beneficial! Keep reading to know more…
Online reviews arevital for a business’s success. However, traditional logic dictates that good reviews equal more business, while bad ones’ drive customers away.
Yet, when considering yourself as a consumer you may identify that bad reviews are actually beneficial for building integrity and credibility. Imagine that you are searching for a certain product and you find only good reviews. Wouldn’t you be skeptical? Wouldn’t you think that some of them are fake or that the business is most probably deleting the bad ones? Would you doubt the authenticity of the business?
There are 2 kinds of businesses in today’s world. Those you have received a negative review and those that will. At some point everyone will get a bad review. Therefore, it is not the end of the world if your business gets a bad review. In fact, they might be beneficial as they can help you see the consumer’s viewpoint.
Furthermore, a negative review provides an opportunity for optimization and further discussion with an unhappy customer. This discussion is vital to your business as you have one more chance with an unhappy customer, before he/she leaves your business for good, to try and turn him into a happy one.
How to deal with negative reviews:
Respond promptly and don’t get into an argument.
Be real and admit your mistakes.
Correct inaccuracies.
Write like a person, not a corporation. Empathize with the customer.
Take it offline.
Offer to make thing right.
Be consistent.
Follow up to check if the issue has been resolved and whether the customer is now happy.
Doing business in the digital world ideally leads to digital engagement. You shouldn’t be afraid of online reviews because they mean you have connected to a consumer. Therefore, each review, positive or negative, provides an opportunity – a chance to pat your team on the back for a job well done or to refine your strategies.
Your customers are online every day. They are looking for solutions to their problems and reviews help them with their buying decisions. Make it easy for them and in turn, they will reward you with their loyalty.
Have you ever wondered how important are customer reviews to consumers? As it turns out, they are very important, and they also support consumer’s buying decisions! Are you interested in learning why customer reviews matter?
Have you ever wondered how important are customer reviews to consumers? As it turns out, they are very important, and they also support consumer’s buying decisions!
In fact:
90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business and
88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Enjoy this beautiful infographic that demonstrates the importance of online customer reviews to shoppers!
It is evident, that customer reviews cancreate trust to your brand and can increase customer engagement. There are so many reasons why consumers want to stay informed through product reviews! Let’s dive into the most critical ones:
1. Need for authenticity
When shopping online, it is not possible to physically see, touch and feel a certain product. Knowing the experience of other shoppers becomes of outmost importance as, shoppers want to know if other shoppers are buying this product, what others think of it and whether they will get what the company promised.
2. Need to know they are spending their money right
No one wants to waste money. Considering the number of brands that offer the same benefits, it is almost impossible to choose one and make sure that your money is being spent right. Access to reviews makes it much easier to judge the quality and authenticity of the product/ service on offer.
3. Help in making a quick purchase decision
These days there is so clutter in the market that deciding on buying anything can take a considerable amount of time and effort. The way to reduce this time and effort is through knowing what other consumers are buying, which products/ services are trending, which products or brands are genuine and whether they will provide everything they have promised.
Online shopping is probably one of the biggest game changers. Therefore, the need to have online customer reviews is rising and it is of great importance for every Business that wants to succeed in today’s competitive market.
Hey! You can discover more about online reviews in the following articles:
Online reviews have created a new field of marketing and communication that bridges the gap between traditional word-of-mouth and a viral form of feedback that can influence consumer’s opinion. Do you know the exact reasons why customer reviews are important?
Online reviews from customers have created a new field in marketing and communication that bridges the gap between traditional word-of-mouth and a viral form of feedback that can influence consumer’s opinion.
Maybe you are already on board, collecting customer reviews about the level of the service you provide and responding to the valuable feedback of your customers, but let’s take a step back to enumerate some reasons that highlight the importance of getting customer reviews for your business.
7 reasons why customer reviews are important!
1)Better Understand your Customers & Improve Customer Service
Analyzing reviews left by your customers, helps your company understand overall customer satisfaction, as they can provide your business with feedback regarding what your customers truly want.
By using this insightful information as input, you will be able to improve customer service by quickly and efficiently resolve the issues that consumers faced, thereby creating a positive experience for the consumer and keeping your focus on their needs.
2) Credibility & Social Proof
No doubt, we are social creatures since the moment we come to this world and we are interested in knowing what other say before we make our buying decisions. Much like we would ask friends and family for recommendations, review sites allow us to do this online with just some clicks.
3) Fight with experience to save margins
Reviews enable new businesses to stand shoulder to shoulder with more established competition, and potentially gain a positive niche in people’s estimation and expectations. Look at it this way…which company would you rather buy from: one with 50 3-star reviews or one with 5 5-star reviews? Voila! You just took the discussion away from the discount and price!
4) Allow Consumers to Have a Voice and Create Customer Loyalty
Consumers that take the time to leave an online review for your business are far more likely to feel a certain loyalty to you and keep coming back. Through the act of leaving a review and establishing a relationship with your business, it allows consumers to feel like they have a voice even behind a desktop and/or mobile and/ or tablet screen and are able to provide feedback in a positive and meaningful way.
5) Improve Rankings
Reviews appear to be the most prominent ranking factor in local search. It helps businesses rank well, even if they have low quality link profiles.
According to SEJ, “pages with reviews which mention a keyword and/or the name of a city, were found to have higher rankings in Google’s local pack. At a high level, having a keyword you are trying to rank for, and a mention of a city you are working to rank in, in reviews has a high correlation with high ranking Google My Business results”.
6) Consumers are Doing your Marketing for You
Positive online business reviews are worth a great deal and can offer your business benefits that a simple marketing campaign can’ t. In a nutshell, they are like micro – marketing campaigns that keep working long after the online review has been posted, providing, thus, a constant positive image to potential customers and creating a continual brand awareness that benefits the business for both the short and the long term.
7) Reviews Generate More Reviews
When a business has already received online reviews, it encourages other visitors to leave their own feedback. Just the appearance of several reviews seems to be enough to give new customers the incentive and confidence to submit their own opinion on a particular product or service.
Online customer reviews are here to stay, and the longer you wait to start encouraging them, the more you stand lose. Online customer reviews appear to be a great avenue for grabbing consumer’s attention and increasing sales. The importance of customer reviews is tremendous as they are very helpful to a vast majority of consumers and they are also responsible for securing your online visibility in search rankings. Furthermore, as they increase in importance and more competitors are encouraging customer reviews, your involvement is only going to become even more necessary.
An important goal of every company that want to be customer centric should be to manage every moment of truth with their customers and do what it takes to create an above average moment of magic experience. Do you know the 3 steps to accomplish it?
In this article we discussed about moments of truth and how they formulate and affect the overall customer experience. A really important goal of every company that want to be customer centric should be to manage every moment of truth with their customers and do what it takes to create an above average moment of magic experience.
By leveraging these moments of truth, namely your customers activities and interactions with your brand, a specific process should be designed which will include 3 concepts:
Optimization: Find all the different moments in the buying or service process and use them to delight and engage customers.
Transformation:Find the moments that could be optimized in order to change and provide a better interaction model throughout the entire customer journey.
Innovation: Always look outside the current buying or service processes to identify other moments and orchestrate those into an industry-changing scenario which will provide you with a strong competitive advantage in the world of customer centricity.
Regardless of whether you are an online business or an offline store, B2C or B2B, there are lots of opportunities to deliver a positive experience to your customer which will give them the confidence that they made the right decision to do business with you.
Think out of the box and put yourself in customer’s shoes. Think like a consumer! Ask yourself:
What are you expecting from a business? And when are you expecting it?
Which actions you would find impressive?
Why you will decide to buy again from a specific business?
The most important thing in this process is, to make consumers feel unique and treat them in a personalized way. Speak their language, respond to their requests and ask for their help to improve every aspect of your business. People love the feeling that they are needed and valued! Therefore, when you ask them to take an action they will be willing to help.
Keep in mind, that you should always focus on humans and not on clicks. Talk to your customers in a personalized way and show them that they are not part of a whole, but they are unique to your business. Rely on human interactions and you won’t regret it!
So, what are you waiting for?Start by creating some amazing personalized campaigns according to your customer’s needs and feedback and lift your customer experience to its maximum.
Want to know more about the moments of truth with your customer?
There is a starting point in the process of improving customer experience and it is called “moments of truth”. Do you know the exact moments of truth with your customers?
There is a starting point in the process of improving the customer experience of customers and it is called “moments of truth”. In Forbes, Carlzon defined the Moment of Truth as every point in time a customer interacts with any aspect of the company and therefore, an impression is formed, which can be mapped in the entire lifecycle of a consumer, from the moment of acquisition to eternity, like it is displayed by Gartner in the following image.
Examples of such moments of truth between a brand or a store and a consumer are the following:
The consumer buys a product in a store, known as ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth, coined by Google in 2011)
The brand presents the product to the consumer, either in-store or in the online world, while a user want to cover a relative need (defined as Less than ZMOT, defined byEventricity LTD in 2014)
The consumer experiences the product’s quality while the product’s first use
The brand gets feedback from the consumer, either by asking directly or by reading a review of the product, written by the consumer
As mentioned in this post, by working on taking the most out of these moments of truth, you can achieve amazing impact on customer engagement and get profits instead of revenues.
For example, a gap in the customer experience your company provides can be found between the time a customer clicks on the buy button and when their order is delivered. During shipping time, the company loses control over the process, other than keeping the customer informed. However, there is nothing to control the customer’s emotions during that time. Maybe the gap is only 2 to 4 days, according to your shipping policy. What can you do to reinforce that the customer made the right decision to buy your product and do business with you?
Here is the opportunity you were searching for! The next time you will be planning the content of your email campaign, or the next time that you will be sending an email to a loyal and happy customer, think it not as a communication instant, but as a moment between them and your brand and think of something to make it special!
Read more here on what are the steps that will transform customer experience, by working on moments of truth!
Want to know more about the moments of truth with your customer?
