24 Hours to Respond Customer Reviews
When your company is faced with negative reviews, how long do you have to respond? To answer this common question from companies, we need to understand the speed of negative reviews.
We live in a marketplace fueled by digital conversations. In recent years, the term “word of mouth” has taken on a whole new meaning as influencers and friends alike review products regularly.
If you run a successful business, chances are that your brand is being talked about digitally. First, you must be listening to consumer chatter for both your brands, and your competitors’. Second, you need to be responding to the reviews you receive, positive and negative.
With just a few strokes on a phone, a negative review can travel faster than ever before. That means your brand should respond to a negative review in under 24 hours.
So, how can you effectively step in to manage reviews?
1. Social brand listening and monitoring
Transparency is key to social brand listening. If you are a company that strives for continuous improvement, you need to be hearing the unfiltered thoughts of your customers.
However, there are two factors obstructing your ability to easily hear what people are saying about your brand:
- So many platforms: It is nearly impossible to stay on top of all the review and reputation sites out there. From Reddit to Google Reviews to Yelp to more traditional social media communities like Twitter and Facebook, people are likely talking about your brand across a variety of platforms.
- So little time: Your company is focused on brand management, its own social media posts, inbound marketing, outbound marketing, traditional customer service, and more. Your team doesn’t have the time to do extensive social listening for your brand.
The solution to both challenges? For ultimate data transparency across platforms, plus an unmatchable speed of monitoring that your team doesn’t need to personally provide, consider a service to do your listening for you.
2. Responding to customer comments
Both positive and negative reviews need to be addressed. Though this seems like a reactive practice, always catching up to the comments of your reviewer, it is truly a proactive way to engage customers where they are at.
Plus, from a public platform, your response may even influence the decision of a new customer-swaying them to try your brand.
Here are the main reasons why you might be avoiding responding to reviews:
- It’s hard to stay polite: When a customer attacks your brand, it’s natural to get defensive. You need an impartial third party to write on behalf of your brand, mitigating damage and promoting your brand’s excellence.
- It’s hard to stay on brand: While you have a marketing toolkit for brand standards, how do you communicate your company’s mission and brand in response to a review? It seems impossible, but there are experts ready to combine their best practices in review responses with your unique brand messaging.
- It’s hard to find the time: We’ve already established that your company is busy. Your employees are giving 110%. So where does review response come in?
Pro tip: Stay on top of the competition by enlisting a team to respond to your reviews, using your standards and principles for brand excellence.
3. Mitigating the impact of negative reviews
The ease of writing a review is only increasing, and more review platforms are offering incentives for customers to write reviews. This means more reviews of your brand will continue to collect online, and not just from the folks who typically review as extreme cases.
You can be a proactive brand by instituting a powerful mitigation strategy that is as lightning quick as reviews themselves.
Consistent, immediate and quality feedback can help make customers feel heard, potentially prompt the removal of negative reviews, and show that your company cares about its reputation and authority online.
Originally published at https://www.letusrespond.com on August 12, 2021.
