It’s one thing to gather reviews, but it’s almost equally as important to respond to them. Yes, it can be time-consuming to go through multiple online review sites to respond to all your reviews, so it’s pretty tempting to only respond to the negative commentary and defend yourself against criticism.
However, responding to all of your reviews (good and bad) can build trust with your customers, which is why you should be doing so.
Online reviews are extremely influential, and with 80% of online users found in research* to be significantly influenced by reviews, it doesn’t look great when there are a whole bunch of reviews that haven’t been acknowledged. Prospective customers need to see that you care about all of your customers and are not just defending your business against the bad reviews that have been left. Instead of only being reactive, be proactive and show appreciation for the customers that have taken the time to leave you a good review too, people notice this when researching!
Regardless of the tone of the reviews, customers are taking time to share their thoughts about their experience with your business, and responding to the reviews shows that you are engaged and are listening to your customers.
With templates and a quick copy and paste, it shouldn’t be a burden to respond. Having all reviews in one place instead of heading to multiple online review sites also speeds things up, which is something you can do easily within Yonder. We integrate with Google My Business and more reviews sites — coming soon.
Don’t leave your customer reviews on ‘read’, respond!
*Data sourced from “Decision Support Systems Journal, vol 113, Sept 2018” [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167923618300861].
