The Strategy of Managing Customer Reviews

The reality of today’s consumers is this: customer reviews are a huge piece of the puzzle. They establish your business as trustworthy and reputable, but they also determine how your website performs. There’s a procedure to follow when it comes to collecting, posting, and managing customer reviews. The Get Smart Group encourages all of our clients to follow a specific Review Management Strategy. We’ve posted it here so you can follow it, too.

Ask everybody for a rating & a review in a private email.
Ask positive reviewers to post their review on social media.
Repost them on your website.
Deal with negative reviews – want to learn how? We can help!
Managing customer reviews is easy with the right reports.
Avoid the temptation to fake it.

Ask Everyone for Reviews

If your business isn’t asking for reviews now, you need to be. Ask everybody for a review, no matter how big or small their purchase is. Encourage people to leave reviews in more than one place. Here are some ideas:

Show Those Reviews on Your Website

Having customer reviews and/or testimonials on your website will actually help your page show up better in search results. Google favors pages that have customer reviews on them, and those reviews will show up in regular search results. One way to make sure the best reviews are automatically posted is through Get Smart Reputation, which reaches out to your customers and gently reminds them to share their experiences. “When the customer has a 4 or 5 star review, it is automatically shared on multiple ratings platforms. Now here is the best part! When negative feedback is left (3 stars or worse), the dealer is notified before any feedback is posted to the public. This allows the dealer to address a problem they may have never known about and – in most cases – change a negative response to a positive one that can then be shared,” says Tim Warren, The Get Smart Group’s Sales & Customer Relations Specialist. “This program isn’t just a benefit, it’s a necessity for our clients.”

Deal with Negative Reviews

Negative reviews are inevitable, so you’ll need a procedure to deal with them. Respond quickly to negative reviews by reaching out by email or giving the reviewer a personal phone call to try to work out the problem. Leave a comment on the review so potential buyers know you’re working on the situation or that it has been resolved. Many times, a customer will come back and leave a follow up review about the customer service received as a result of the review, which gives potential buyers peace of mind that you’ll take care of them, too.

Managing Customer Reviews with Regular Reports

You need a way to visualize all of your online reviews so you know what people are saying and where they are saying it. There are custom monitoring & reporting tools that we use, and Get Smart Group Reputation provides all of the relevant customer review information you’ll need so you can manage all of your customer reviews across a variety of online platforms.

Avoid the Temptation to Fake It

Today’s buyers are quick to identify a pile of bologna as a pile of bologna. If your business has 100 reviews and they’re all 5 stars, that’s a red flag. Most people expect that a business is going to have a couple of 1-star reviews. Sometimes people are crabby – potential buyers are okay with that! What you should strive for is mostly 5 stars, then 4 stars, and hopefully only a few 1, 2 or 3 stars.

Bonus Tip: When You’re Starting From Scratch

If you currently don’t have any reviews on your website, this information might motivate you to get started! That’s good! What’s not good is asking all of your past customers to write reviews at the same time. The leading customer review sites have meticulous algorithms that will hide certain reviews if they seem like they’re not spontaneous. Yes, you should as past customers for reviews, but be strategic about how you do it.

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