Relevant Reviews: Keep Your Business Meaningful

What do Aziz Ansari and Jimmy Fallon have to do with Online Presence Management? Usually not too much. However, in the last four months, the pair have done two segments reading bad Yelp reviews. Take a look!

Not only is this clip hilarious, it actually highlights a very real and important part of Online Presence Management. Reviews will make or break your business. Here’s why.

Consumer Behavior

While word of mouth is a great way to hear a second opinion, the internet connects us with a community outside our immediate circle of influences. As a reflection of the power the internet, 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Users from all over the world review products and services. For products like technology, reviews might come from a global user base. A local business mostly receives them from members of the community or neighboring towns. Whoever your product caters to, authentic and frequent reviews will bolster the reputation and attention your business receives.

As you know, almost every search engine or review site uses stars to rate local businesses. Five stars is great, one star is bad. These stars are always a reflection of customer’s reviews; if they like your service, you’ll get great reviews, and closer to 5 stars. If they don’t… well you may have a few things to work on. Stars may seem a little arbitrary, but they carry a lot of weight: 58% of consumers say that the star rating is the most important factor in their product and service decisions. This stat demonstrates the trust that consumer’s place in online reviews.

Stars are the quickest way to judge a business, although most customers will take the time to read a few reviews as well. 90% read less than 10 comments before forming an opinion. That’s not a whole lot! What’s more, if a review is older than three months, 73% of consumers consider it outdated and irrelevant! It’s important that reviews are recent and positive.

To recap, reviews are important for 3 reasons.

1. Customers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
2. For over 50% of customers, star ratings are the most important deciding factor.
3. Customers read relatively few reviews and only consider the most recent.

Responding to Reviews

Like Jimmy Fallon and Aziz Ansari demonstrated, there is a right and a wrong way to respond to reviews. Hopefully, you won’t encounter any situations like those business owners did. Here are a few strategies for responding to positive and negative reviews. Let’s start with this: it’s always a good idea to respond, and to do so promptly. It shows commitment to your image, appreciation for valued customers, and class in the face of criticism.

Positive

Responding to a four or five star review not only demonstrates your appreciation, but it gives you an opportunity to market your business. Here are some of the best practices when responding to a positive customer review.

1. Thank them for leaving the review. Respond personally so that they know you actually took time to write your reply rather than copying and pasting a generic response. Reference certain things they said in their review.
2. Use keywords like your business name, city, and business type in your response. These can help boost SEO.
3. Market your business by suggesting other products or services you offer. You can also let them know of promotions and events that are coming up.
4. Be sure to invite them back again.

Negative

Negative reviews can be a little more difficult to handle. Sometimes customers lie or are totally out of line. Sometimes it is the businesses fault and they deserve the criticism. Either way, it’s worth responding to every negative review. The best case scenario is to convince the business owner to revise their review. These are the best practices in responding to negative reviews.

1. Apologize! Even if you’re not sure it was your fault, apologize to the business owner and demonstrate you understand them.
2. Invite them to speak with you privately. There is no reason to have a whole conversation on a posted review. Give them a number they can call to discuss their concerns. This is a professional way for you to apologize, clarify, and take action.
3. Keep it short. Your response shouldn’t be more than a few sentences.

Anything in Between

What about 3 star reviews? Chances are there was just something small that kept them from giving you a positive review. Use the best practices from both the positive and negative sections to respond. Thank them for their business. If you feel a phone call with the customer would help resolve the issue, give them a contact number. At any rate, responding professionally with the intent to retain their business.

Stay on Top of Reviews with JJUMPP

Our goal is to provide business owners every tool the need to succeed online. Instead of working with a company that only offers review assistance, JJUMPP gives that, and much more. Reviews are just one aspect of Online Presence Management. When it comes to reviews, JJUMPP provides three key services to help businesses stay ahead.

Monitoring

The first is through monitoring. Any time a customer reviews your business somewhere on the internet, JJUMPP notifies the business owner. We’ve seen business owners don’t usually where the review was posted. They’ll hear through the grapevine that a bad review is hurting their business, but they don’t have the time to search it out and address it. JJUMPP shows when and where that review was made, enabling the business owner to proactively act on it.

Generating

The second service JJUMPP provides is review generating. If a business is missing new or even any reviews, or just wants to get more to boost their star rating, JJUMPP is the perfect solution. Through our software, a business owner can send personalized emails and texts to recent customer’s asking for a review. With JJUMPP you can track the open and click-through rates of those messages, as well as the conversion each message generates. This can all be done from the Springboard. We make it simple to get new reviews from your customers.

Responding

Just as JJUMPP monitors what platform the reviews come from, we also encourage you to respond to them in our software. No need to go to the platform where the review was posted. Our customer support team is here to help you develop a response if you need ideas.

Let your reviews speak for your business, and take the JJUMPP today.

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