4 Benefits Of Replying To Reviews

4 Benefits Of Replying To Reviews

Replying to customer reviews has many benefits, but the following reasons sit at the top of the list.

1. Meet Your Customer’s Expectation

You’re not meeting your customers’ expectations if you don’t reply to reviews. 86% of consumers of consumers who complain expect a response within 3 days. Plus, if you don’t have a process in place for customers to give feedback directly to your business they will be driven to air grievances via online review sites.

There’s no excuse to let customer feedback go unanswered across the web. Use an online review monitoring tool like GatherUp to alert you when a new review is posted so that you can respond promptly. Your reviewer will appreciate the attention, and your business will meet customer expectations.

2. Positively Influence The Conversation

There are more than 100 online review sites, and you have little to no control over any one of them. The fact that brands can’t control what’s posted is exactly what makes these sites build trust with consumers. 

The one thing you can do, as the business owner, customer support team, or in the company’s name is reply to reviews posted on its business profile. These replies don’t go unnoticed either––97% of consumers who read reviews also read businesses’ responses.

Replying to online reviews lets you influence the conversation positively, and that’s a big win. You can provide clarity to both the reviewer and other potential customers by offering additional information, context, and support. Just like the customer experience is there for all to see, so is your review response.

For this review, Clean Juice does a great job of letting the customer (and reader) know they’ve noted their experience and will prevent it from happening to others. 

3. Drive Brand Loyalty

By replying, you create a two-way connection that helps improve customer relationships and loyalty. 

Brand loyalty is driven by emotional connections, so make happy customers by making them feel validated, excited, or appreciated by sending them kind words in response to their valuable feedback.

4. Increase Visibility In Local Search

Google has three main factors for local search rankings; proximity, prominence, and relevance. Prominence is measured using signals, including inbound links to your website, user engagement, and reviews. 

According to Moz, review signals are the third most important factor for local pack rankings and are seventh for local organic search.

When you reply to online reviews, other customers can see you acknowledge their opinion, and so are more likely to leave a review themselves. More reviews mean better SEO for your business profile, which impacts your review signals and increases your brand’s visibility in local searches.

Not sure how you can keep in top of so many reviews? US Storage Centers responds to reviews for over 120 locations from a single interface using GatherUp. Their Google reviews have increased by 167%, so they have the top organic spot in local search results.

The Most Important Reviews to Reply to

It always feels good to reply to a wonderful review about your product/service from a great customer. But, five-star reviews are not the most urgent ones to reply to from a review management perspective.

Usually, the most detailed reviews don’t hold a 5-star rating. They likely carry valuable insight, so they’re are the most important to reply to first.

Here’s how to prioritize your review responses: 

1. All Negative and Neutral Reviews

If nothing else, make responding to all negative and 3-star neutral reviews your top priority. A bad online review results from an experience so negative that your customer has taken the time to post a review. 

Neutral reviews often come from loyal customers invested in your brand because there’s something they love, but there’s also something that isn’t quite right. Your brand needs to acknowledge the review and take responsibility. Your future customers are watching.

Austin Bike Tours’ response to a 2-star review shows empathy, offers a solution and takes responsibility for the problem. They already have a 4.8-star rating from 49 reviews, but this response shows that they care and will make things right where they fall short.

2. Direct Feedback

If you have a way for your customers to contact you, such as a form on your website or customer service number, or are actively requesting feedback using email or text, direct feedback from a customer is a call to action. Complaints need immediate attention. They can be a buying signal that a customer wants to continue to do business with you but is feeling so much frustration that they are not sure they can. Plus, taking care of product or service issues is just good business.

Take Clean Juice, they respond to a review with clear details about what happened at the moment of the customer complaint. The response helps prospects understand more about the context of what happened. Plus, the response encourages the customer to return in the future.

3. Google Reviews

Google is the world’s most used search engine, so it’s not surprising that Google reviews have surged in popularity. Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is the top-ranking review website in the United States. 

Reviews on Google appear next to your listing in Maps. Responding to these reviews can help the SEO of your business profile and improve your local ranking on Google.

Dispatch Health responds to all Google reviews with a 2-star rating or below. In this review reply, an executive addresses issues with a new location and invites the customer to contact them directly.

4. Facebook Recommendations

Facebook is the most popular social media platform the world, with billions of users, many customers choose to leave reviews here. The switch from reviews to recommendations in 2018 introduced a text modal to the review process. Now, Facebook requires users to provide at least 25 characters of content to post a recommendation. 

The popularity of this site, its social nature, and required review content make replying to reviews here a win for your brand.

In this recent negative Facebook Recommendation, Hi-Wire Brewing acknowledges issues adjusting to the impact of the economy and asks for forgiveness.

5. Industry Review Sites

There are many niche review platforms for industries, (we monitor over 50 of them). You can meet your customers where they are by monitoring relevant industry-specific platforms. Responding to reviews on industry platforms makes your brand a part of the conversation, and it leaves a trail back to your business.

Depending on your industry, these sites can be really important. If you are in the hospitality industry, TripAdvisor is the best site on which to request and monitor reviews. Angie’s List is perfect for service-related businesses. Ensure you know what sites your customers use to share their experiences and manage them accordingly.

Review reply for negative reviews

Believe it or not, there are benefits to negative reviews. A negative review can be tough to receive, and writing a reply can be intimidating. However, a proactive approach goes a long way. Follow these tips to reply to negative reviews successfully.

• Respond promptly: Around 55% of consumers expect a business to reply to a review within 1 day, and over 30% expect a response within 3 days. Negative reviews demand a swift reply and a solution to show action and care from your business.
• Respond publicly: It’s an opportunity to show consumers you’re capable and willing to right a wrong.
• Read the review thoroughly: Using the customer’s own words to personalize your review reply.
• Offer a solution: Showing empathy for the situation and respect is vital to successful response management, but a solution is at the core of the customer’s needs.
• Put the right person in charge: Ensure that the person or entire team replying to negative reviews has the authority to offer solutions.

Here’s a simple 3-step structure you can use to reply to negative reviews:

Review Replies For Neutral Reviews

Most consumers will only leave reviews if their experience was really bad or bad. Even though neutral reviews are less common, they are just as important to reply to as negative reviews. Because customers often include a compliment and a complaint, your review reply strategy will address both.

Follow these tips when replying to neutral reviews:

• Respond promptly and publicly. Like negative reviews, neutral reviews signal that something didn’t meet your customer’s expectations. For that reason, connect quickly to publicly show consumers you care.
• Celebrate compliments. Let your customer know that you appreciate their positive feedback.
• Resolve issues. There’s something that held your customer back from a 5-star review. So figure out what their complaint is and find a resolution.
• Be specific and concise. Address the positive and negative feedback in 100-150 words.

Review Replies For Positive Reviews

Responding to positive reviews is a great opportunity to build a connection to your brand and make people feel good about being a part of it. Many businesses skip this, but the effort can build a lot of goodwill for your brand. Here are tips for replying to positive reviews.

• Replies to positive customer reviews can be short and sweet. Include a detail from the review for variety.
• Use a conversational tone that aligns with your brand.
• Respond publicly to share in the online conversation.

Use Our Review Response Templates

Replying to good reviews can help boost customer loyalty and enhance your brand reputation. On the other side of the coin, responding to reviews about negative experiences highlights you care about customer satisfaction.

Replying to all your reviews can feel overwhelming at first. So start slowly and use our templates to speed up the process. Ready to streamline your review management? Schedule a demo today. 

When your business responds to reviews, it’s important to get the message and the tone right. Ninety-one percent of 18 to 34-year-olds trust reviews as much as personal recommendations, and almost 50% of local consumers feel the same — that’s how much weight reviews carry. The right response can help dissatisfied customers come away feeling heard and confident in a solution, and it can help satisfied customers stay loyal to your business. And don’t forget: the right response can also inspire potential customers to give your business a try.

In that spirit, we will discuss why review responses matter so much. We also cover a list of common mistakes businesses make when replying to reviews and what to do instead — including how to respond to a negative review — so you can have more productive interactions.

Why you should respond to customer reviews

Online reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and industry-specific sites like Zillow or Healthgrades give customers an opportunity to share the real-life experiences they had with your business — which helps potential customers searching for a local business in your category know whether to choose you. 

Reviews are important enough on their own. But when you reply to reviews, you have an opportunity to affect the impressions of both past and future customers and help shape your brand’s present image. For example, by simply knowing how to respond to a bad review, you can transform that reviewer’s perception of your brand. Or, by acknowledging and celebrating positive comments, you can secure a customer’s loyalty and turn them into a customer for life.  

Effective engagement with reviews — no matter the sentiment — builds credibility with your audience because it shows them you’re paying attention, listening to, and taking seriously what they have to say. 

But we recognize that responses can also be tricky and sometimes it’s easy to mess them up, which is what we’ll focus on next. 

10 common review response mistakes and how to avoid them 

Now that you know why replying to reviews is essential, let’s take a look at some common mistakes when responding and what to do instead. You’ll learn how to respond to a negative review and other review scenarios more effectively.

1. Ignoring negative reviews

Sometimes businesses don’t reply to negative reviews because they don’t want to draw attention to them. It can be tempting to just focus on the positive reviews where customers are thanking your business, praising your offerings, or just generally being positive. Who wouldn’t want that? We all love to be praised and feel appreciated.

But this strategy can have the opposite effect of what’s intended: it can make the negative reviews stand out even more since they’re the only ones without responses. This can make your business seem like it only cares about the happy customers, and that any complaints or concerns don’t really matter.

What to do instead:

Make it a priority to monitor for and respond to negative reviews. Prospective customers need to see that when something didn’t go well with another customer, your business was proactive in addressing the problem and willing to make it right.

This review doesn’t have a response from the business owner or manager. Anyone reading the review may assume the issue hasn’t been fixed in the last four months:

One way to respond to negative review — at the time it’s posted — could be: 

“I sincerely apologize for your negative experience. I plan to review inventory and customer service practices with my team to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

2. Using your response as a chance to boast or advertise

Review responses are supposed to show that you value your customers’ honest feedback and want to understand more about their needs and preferences. 

However, if you’re using review replies as a billboard for promoting your latest offer or a place to expound about your company’s mission or values, you’ll risk coming across as insincere. Customers prefer to engage with businesses that aren’t putting themselves first or only seem like they’re in it for the profit.  

What to do instead:

Rather than jumping to promote your brand or quote your mission statement, analyze the specifics of the complaint or feedback and either identify a solution or show appreciation for what was positively expressed — and then leave it at that.

While this review response does the right thing by suggesting an offline discussion, the business takes it too far by pushing its ethos:

One way to respond instead could be: 

“I’m sorry you had this experience. Please call me at [phone number] so I can hear the details of your situation and provide further assistance.”

3. Arguing with the customer over the details

This one can be difficult not to do, especially when a review seems confusing or totally off base. When customers complain, they’re not always going to get the details exactly right, and it can make the problem seem worse than it is. But it doesn’t mean they don’t have a legitimate complaint — and your response is not the place to argue over the specifics of their experience.

Remember, everyone can see your review response — not just the review author. And how you come across can impact the way potential customers think about you. Do you seem petty and aggressive, or grounded and neutral? Ultimately, how you respond to a bad review isn’t about winning an argument but finding suitable solutions that encourage detractors to give your business a second chance.

What to do instead:

First and foremost, remain solution-oriented — i.e., pinpoint the exact problem and how it can be fixed. If you need to ask the customer for additional details to fully understand the issue, then offer to take the conversation offline. You can provide contact info in your review reply and ask them to get in touch with you to explain further.

Here, the restaurant tried to rectify the mistake at the time by bringing another bowl of soup, but the customer was still annoyed. Using the review response to argue about the original attempt to make it right won’t help:

One way to respond could simply be: 

“We sincerely apologize for the soup mix-up. We’d love the chance to serve you again and give you a much better experience.”

4. Replying late

Better late than never is true in the world of review responses. That’s because it’s so easy for businesses to get busy and for staff to get overwhelmed. Before you know it, review management falls through the cracks and suddenly you’re catching up on old reviews. But if you’re consistently weeks or even months behind in replying to customer reviews, it can give the impression that you can’t be bothered. 

And here’s the thing: You may think customers won’t notice when you reply to their reviews. But Google sends customers an email notification alerting them to a new business reply, so there’s no getting around the date that appears. Bottom line: review response times matter — especially when you’re learning how to respond to negative reviews with greater success.

What to do instead:

If you’re just now starting a review response campaign, don’t panic. You can start by being selective about which older reviews you reply to, such as choosing ones that are more detailed or mention specific issues which your business later fixed. You can say that although it’s been a while since the review was written, you still care about the customer’s feedback. Also note any changes you’ve made in your business and encourage the customer to revisit your business.

Then, going forward, prioritize customer reviews and respond to all of them as quickly as possible. And don’t underestimate the value of a good review management platform. It’s a great way to automate your review processes and customize review notifications so you can stay on top of it while saving precious time.

Even though this hair salon review is two years old, the business manager or owner could still follow up with an apology and a solution to encourage the dissatisfied customer to give them another chance. A late reply is better than ignoring the review:

One way to respond to the negative review could be:

“I’m sorry you had a bad experience with your blowout and that we’re just now reading this. We’re making sure our entire team is up-to-date on training and techniques to avoid problems like this. If you’re interested in trying us again, please accept a 15% discount on your next haircut. You can call me directly at [phone number] and I’ll make sure the front desk applies the discount when you book.”

5. Not engaging with the actual problem

When there are a lot of reviews to reply to, it’s easy to miss key details. In a sincere attempt to keep up with review responses, thoroughness can fall by the wayside.

But customers can sniff out a vague or canned response right away. “If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know” doesn’t add any real value. 

What to do instead: 

Take the time to read each review carefully to pick up on all the details before responding. Always address the customer’s specific problem(s) and engage with any suggestions they may make. Being able to truly hone in on what’s being said can make a real difference with your current and future customers. 
In this review, the salon owner’s response to the bad review doesn’t actually engage with the problem: the client was in pain during treatment and received subpar service. Sure, the client might have been late, but the owner doesn’t address the real issues in the review:

One way to respond could be:

“Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. I’m so sorry your wife had a painful experience and received poor treatment by our staff. Please accept a full refund or your wife can book the same service again free of charge. You can call me directly at [phone number] to let me know what you prefer.”

6. Only caring about serious complaints

Don’t get us wrong: as we’ve already discussed, replying to complaints and negative feedback should be a top priority for your business. But you can go too far in that direction by only addressing the most urgent scenarios and not engaging with the neutral and positive reviews too.

There’s a good reason to respond to a negative review that outlines a major problem, and to do it ASAP, but not at the expense of every other review. Each review response provides an invaluable opportunity to strengthen customer relationships — making the customer feel like a valued part of your business and that their opinions matter.

What to do instead:

Reply promptly to all types of reviews to assure customers that you value any and all feedback — not just the disasters or unusual situations — and that you welcome their suggestions. 

This positive review is a great moment for the business to strengthen their relationship with the happy customer:

One way to respond could be: 

“Thank you for taking the time to leave this review! We love that you love our organic produce and bakery, and that our delivery service is meeting your needs. Let us know if you have any  suggestions for what else we can offer to best serve our customers.”

7. Leaving the customer without a solution

Reviewers need a clear idea of what the next steps are when they’ve shared a negative experience. Though finding the right solution sometimes means taking the conversation offline, you never want to just leave the customer hanging. A key part of learning how to respond to a negative review appropriately is to focus on the solution itself.

Also, once your business leaves a response, customers can’t reply again. So if there’s no obvious solution or next steps offered on the first go-round, they’ll have a hard time knowing if their problem will actually be fixed. The result? An already-angry customer gets angrier.

What to do instead:

Always propose a solution or two that you or the customer can put into action right away. And if you need more information before you can do that, make it super easy for the customer to get in touch with you — whether by phone, email, or a physical address. Being straightforward about solutions makes it more likely the customer will forgive the mistake and come back.

Here’s how an HVAC business offered a solution to a delay in communication that affected a customer:

One way to respond could be: 

Wait a minute. This is already a great response and a reasonable solution the customer can put into action right away. Clearly this business has figured out how to respond to a bad review. No need to improve on it.

8. Making it generic

Generic-ness deserves its own item here. And that’s because customers are individuals. They have their own worries, preferences, and needs. When communicating with a business, they want to be seen and understood, and don’t want to feel like they’re talking to a robot.

If you say the same thing in every review response, it looks like your business deals with customers by rote and doesn’t do anything to tailor experiences or interactions. Even though some reviews may be near identical themselves, it’s still important to personalize each response as much as you can.

What to do instead:

Even if you’re acknowledging positive feedback, try to write original responses. Simple touches like using the reviewer’s name and including the exact product or service they mentioned ensures your responses are authentic and unique to the individual.

Here’s a short response to some positive feedback that could go even further:

Another way to respond could be:

“Thank you, [customer name]. We’re glad that our team was on time and acted in a professional manner. This is what we like to hear. We appreciate any recommendations and look forward to serving you again.”

9. Thinking that a “thank you” is enough 

Review overwhelm can make it tempting to say a quick thanks in response to a positive review — and then move on to the next. But as we’ve been discussing, if you’re not fully engaging with the sentiment and content of each review, you’re losing an opportunity to authentically connect with your customer. 

“Thank you” is nice. “Thank you” is appreciated. “Thank you for your feedback” is a good way to start a response to a negative review and can take some of the edge out of an unhappy customer. But it shouldn’t stop there. 

What to do instead:

If you want to wow your customer in a review response and increase your chances of turning them into customers for life, don’t hold back. In addition to expressing genuine gratitude, aim for clever, funny, warm, delighted, humble — whatever closely reflects the voice of your brand or business and appropriately matches the sentiment of the review. 

Here’s a simple review that nevertheless deserves a personalized response:

One way to respond could be:

“Thank you for your review, from our family to yours. We’re happy to give customers like you a great dining experience without breaking the bank. Hope to see you again soon.”

10. Being defensive in your response to a negative review

This one goes hand-in-hand with not arguing over the details. It’s really hard not to take a negative review personally. When someone is criticizing your business — fairly or unfairly — it feels natural to want to defend yourself.

But online reviews are not a court of law where defending yourself is imperative to prevent or correct a wrong. As a business owner, your job is to maintain a cool head. Taking the bait and getting defensive will only aggravate the customer and put you farther away from a solution that works for both of you. 

What to do instead:

Try to understand the situation from the customer’s perspective. Were they ticked off by slow service? Were they disappointed that a specialty item on the menu sold out? Was it their second appointment and they were expecting more? Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes gets you into an empathetic mindset — which is what you need to truly make it right with the customer.

Although this response tries to find out more about the issue, it comes off as slightly defensive, as if the owner is questioning the customer’s experience:

One way to respond instead could be:

“I’m sorry we disappointed you. It sounds like you prefer your cold brew extra strong, and we didn’t deliver. We’re happy to adjust orders to suit our customers’ taste, and would like the chance to do that for you on your next visit.”

Final thoughts

Making these mistakes when replying to reviews is common. But once you know how to think about reviews, how to respond to a bad review — and all reviews for that matter — gets easier. You’ll find an approach that encourages both fans and detractors to continue doing business with you.

The key is to treat reviews individually and reply promptly and authentically. Approach customer feedback with an open mind and lean into both positive and negative comments. That way you’ll be able to be more empathetic and provide better solutions when issues arise.
Want to make sure you never miss another customer review again? Enjoy a free 14-day trial of GatherUp and see how easy it is to monitor for, request, gather, and quickly respond to reviews.

With a metric like Net Promoter Score (NPS), calculated using the NPS score scale, you can gain a real sense of customer happiness and loyalty. Why does this matter? Because happy, loyal customers are usually eager to talk about your business to others. And since word-of-mouth referrals, whether offline or online, are a reliable source for new business, using NPS to your advantage is important.

Here’s a simple guide to help you understand NPS more clearly and learn how to calculate your Net Promoter Score on a 10-point scale.

What is Net Promoter Score?

NPS measures how your customers feel about your business and how likely they are to tell others about it. Said another way, it’s a great way to judge word-of-mouth referrals, which are important sources of new business since they come from trusted sources: friends and family vs. an advertising campaign.

In practice, NPS is a number — or score — you get from doing a survey of your customers. The score represents customer sentiment and is easy to understand and communicate. NPS can be used by any business, large or small, to better understand how customers feel and determine if improvements should be made.

NPS has been around for a while; Harvard Business Review first wrote about NPS almost 20 years ago. It remains such a good indicator of customer happiness and loyalty that it’s used by two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 today. And it’s why NPS is still the first question we ask in our feedback process.

What is the NPS Score Scale? 

The NPS score scale is a 0-10 point scale with 10 being very likely to refer and 0 being not likely at all. To get your score, all you need to do is conduct a simple survey that asks your customers a single question: “How likely are you to refer a friend or colleague to our business?” The customers then answer the question by assigning a number from the scale, as shown below.

You then divide the answers into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. Before we discuss how to calculate your final score, here’s a look at each category and what they tell us about the customers that fall into them:

Promoters

Promoters rate you a 9 or 10 on the question. As the category name implies, promoters — also referred to as brand advocates — are the customers who champion your business by telling others to buy from you. They might even be so thrilled with your business that they’ll talk about it unprompted.

Real-life example: Your neighbor walks into the neighborhood pool party and out of nowhere starts telling everyone about the company that just painted his house. He raves about how they were affordable, meticulous, and so easy to deal with. While he’s talking, a few people look up the house-painting business on their phones and add the number to their contacts.

That’s a promoter: They give you tons of free marketing by enthusiastically sharing their great experiences and positive opinions.

Passives

Passives rate you a 7 or 8 on the question. These customers may have had a decent experience with your business, but nothing really wowed them. As such, they don’t have anything bad to say about you, but they won’t go out of their way to say anything good either. 

Real-life example: You’re talking to a coworker one day and she tells you about the resort she just went to on vacation. When you ask how the resort was, she says, “It’s fine. Nothing great. Nothing bad. But I might try another place next time.” 

Passives give you their business once or twice, but are basically indifferent to it. They’re ambivalent about returning and they see no real reason to recommend it to anyone.

Pro tip: Passives actually get left out of the NPS calculation, as we’ll show below. But that doesn’t mean this group isn’t important. You need to know they exist — and how many there are — so you can figure out how to move some of them up to being a promoter, since turning passives into promoters can help grow your business. But you also want to make sure that passives don’t dip down into the category we’ll look at next.

Detractors

Detractors rate you anywhere from 0 to 6. In the eyes of these customers, your business falls short — could be a few inches, could be a mile (especially if they rate you a 0 or 1). Detractors are the opposite of promoters. Instead of singing your praises, they tell their friends, family, neighbors, and anyone who’ll listen to avoid your business at all costs. 

Real-life example: You meet up with your best friend for a beer and after some small talk he asks you if he’s told you about his current real estate agent. He then goes on a 10-minute rant about how the agent never answers his calls, doesn’t follow up until days later, and repeatedly messes up paperwork, causing additional delays and wasted time. He’s not going to use this agent ever again and won’t refer them to anyone else either. You realize you’re not the only one he’s going to rant to about this.

Detractors aren’t just disgruntled customers. They can actually take business from you.

How to calculate your NPS score: The NPS formula

Now that you understand the different customer categories, here’s how to calculate your score:

1. Add up all your promoters, passives, and detractors. Let’s say you have 68 promoters, 14 passives, and 23 detractors, for a total of 105 survey respondents.
2. Divide the number from each category by the total number of survey respondents to get a percentage. For example: 68 promoters divided by 105 total respondents = 64.7%, or you can round up to 65%. 23 detractors divided by 105 total respondents = 21.9%, or you can round up to 22%.
3. Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. So that’s 65% (promoters) minus 22% (detractors) = 43. (Remember: passives don’t get factored into the calculation.)
4. The final number you get is your score — in this case, 43.

If you don’t want to do the math yourself, you can use a free NPS calculator online.

Here’s an easy way to visualize the NPS formula:

And here’s a simplified example of 100 customers answering the Net Promoter Score question and how the results are calculated for that business:

What your NPS score means

Once you calculate your score, then you need to figure out what it’s telling you. At minimum, the NPS ratings scale and formula should help you understand how likely your business is to grow based on how likely your customers are to recommend it to others. 

Here’s a basic breakdown of the score ranges, but keep in mind that these ranges can vary by industry. This is just a simple way of looking at it:

• -100 to 0: Poor and needs improvement
• 1 to 30: Average
• 31 to 70: Good
• 71 to 100: Exceptional (nobody gets 100, so don’t feel you have to chase that)

Why NPS matters to your business

NPS is an important indicator of how your business is doing, giving you insights into:

• Business growth
• Customer churn
• The customer experience
• Customer loyalty
• Effectiveness of your customer service
• Influence of online reviews

If you run a small business, tracking and measuring NPS can make a big difference in your ability to retain customers and stay competitive. While many businesses may be willing to fly blind and never really know what their customers think, you don’t have to. NPS can give you an advantage over the competition by understanding your own customers that much better so you can make meaningful improvements that focus more on what your customers most like about your business.

If you run a multi-location or franchise business, NPS is a fantastic way to get location-specific insights in addition to brand-level insights. And if you run a digital agency, you can track NPS for each of your clients to help inform branding and marketing strategies.

Any business can benefit from the simple power of NPS to capture customer feedback, benchmark where your business is at, and communicate how your business is doing with your staff so you can constantly improve, grow, and succeed.
To learn how GatherUp’s customer feedback and NPS reporting capabilities can help your business, start a free trial.

Key takeaways from the recency of reviews:

• 44% say a review must be written within 1 month to be relevant
• 69% say a review must be written within 2-3 months to be relevant
• 84% say a review must be written within 3-6 months to be relevant
• Only 16% say that reviews older than 6 months are relevant

Having A Constant Flow Of Reviews Is Needed

So now that it’s clear that consumers seek recent reviews, businesses and marketers need to integrate encouraging reviews as an ongoing strategy and not just a tactic to get a handful of reviews one time.  Reviews from a few years ago just might not resonate with consumers at all.  It’s no surprise they might be thinking “that was then, this is now”.

With having thousands of businesses using our platform to help in their review strategy, we definitely see those that succeed more than others.  Plain and simple, the organizations that have customer feedback “baked” into their process are the ones that generate more positive online reviews.

Baking the right elements for customers to communicate their likes and dislikes with your service or product will help lead to fresh reviews on the review sites that matter to your business and target customers.

How To Encourage Reviews

Here are some of the elements I recommend in your review strategy and the execution of it.  I’ll leave out providing great customer service every time. (duh!).

1. Ask all of your customers for feedback.  As a business you can only get better by listening to all of your customers and their good, average or bad experiences.  We’re not saying to ask every customer to review you online, but to make sure you ask every customer to tell YOU how you did serving them. Note the difference.  Making sure you ask every customer for feedback as part of your business process is a long term play, one that can consistently benefit you.
2. Add a personal touch. Talk to your customers about how feedback and online reviews matter to you during your customer experience and that you will be asking this feedback from them.  When you or your employees make customers aware that their feedback is highly valued, it helps increase the amount you get from them.  These interactions can make it more personal and also educate the customer on their value to your company.  Getting a feedback request is then expected and not a surprise.  (Bonus tips:  2A. Some companies reward employees that are mentioned in customer feedback and reviews by name. 2B. Some companies actually ask for feedback and measure Net Promoter Score on individual employees, it’s  a great way to further evaluate employees.)
3. Make it easy.  Wether you use a paper handout or a platform like GetFiveStars, make sure that you are making it easy for your happy customers to review you online.  When your customers have to do all of the work to give you feedback or leave a review, you’ll likely see very few put in that amount of effort … and that effort is likely tied to a very great or very bad experience.  That’s not the risk you want to take.
4. Be realistic. Generating online reviews can be hard (even crazy hard in some industries and on some reviews sites). You’re expectations have to be realistic and you have to stay the course.  Expecting that once you finally have a review strategy and put it into action will yield dozens of reviews immediately will only disappoint you.  For many businesses, simply getting one good online review a month will do them wonders, especially after they hit a dozen or so in a year and 25 or more after two years. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Making sure you are constantly executing against these three tips will ensure that your doing your best to always foster online reviews.

Just like many things in business it truly is a numbers game.  You need to ask hundreds of customers for feedback to hopefully get a handful of reviews and it needs to be constant.  You can’t just take 3 months to try and get somewhere and then abandon getting feedback, among other things you’ll loose the trust of recency with your potential customers.  So get after it, ask your customers every time how you did and make it easy for those willing to share their positive experience to do so.

• The Benefits of Replying to Reviews
• How to Prioritize Review Responses
• Best Practices for How to Respond to Negative Reviews
• Tips for How to Respond to Positive Reviews

Top Benefits of Replying to Reviews

There are many benefits that come from replying to customer reviews but the following reasons sit at the top of the list because they are strategic and offer a long-term business impact.

• Exceed Customer Expectations
  If you’re not replying to reviews, you’re falling short of your customers’ expectations. 86% of users who complain expect a response within 3 days. Putting a process in place for your business to reply to customers will help you to meet, or even better, exceed their expectations.

• Seize an Opportunity to Influence
  Replying to customer reviews gives your business the opportunity to provide additional information, give context, offer perspective, and support the reviewer. Business replies do double-duty. They serve the customer writing the review and influence shoppers who read them to buy from you.

• Make a Connection
  Humans are social creatures. Especially those who reach out to your business by leaving a review. Acknowledging their sentiment and offering a reply validates your customer, their effort, and creates a feel-good connection to your brand. Replying to Google reviews has an added bonus. Google now sends an email alert to the reviewer that informs them of your reply. The customer gets an instant rush from recognition and you get another impression for your brand.

• Get Better Ratings
  A study from Harvard Business Review showed businesses who replied to customer reviews experienced 12% more reviews. Ratings also increased an average of 0.12 stars which could mean an addition of a 1/2 star to your rating.

How To Prioritize Review Responses

Should I respond to reviews? Which reviews do I respond to? The answer to these common questions is… ALL of them. You earned them. Good and bad they are yours to benefit from.

If you have the resources to respond to the volume of reviews you receive then, by all means, respond to all of them. If you don’t have the resources to respond to them all, we have a plan for that too. Follow this outline on how to prioritize what reviews you respond to.

1. First, reply to ALL Negative Reviews then…
2. 1st-party reviews (direct to your business from the customer)
3. Google
4. Facebook
5. Other online review sites in your industry

Reply to All Negative Reviews

If you do nothing else, make responding to all negative to neutral reviews your top priority. To do this well, ensure the person replying to reviews has the authority to solve problems and offer solutions. Showing empathy for the situation and being respectful is vital to successful response management, but providing action is at the core of what the customer wants.

Reply to 1st-party Reviews (Direct Feedback from Your Customer)

No matter the sentiment of a 1st-party review, it’s like a text from your BFF. Don’t leave them hanging. If a customer cares enough to reach out, show them some love. After all, good communication is what lasting relationships are made of.

GatherUp allows you the option to respond to your customers either publicly or privately. If you choose private, your response is only emailed to them and then saved in their customer profile. If you choose to publicly respond, your reply is posted to the Review Widget on your website as well as emailed to the customer and saved to their profile.

Replying to Google Reviews Gives Your Response Reach

Google is the world’s most popular search engine and you’ll notice it’s serving reviews with almost every search in many of its results.

Responding to Google reviews has many benefits. It shows consumers you value reviews and the time they took to write one. When customers see that reviews matter to your business, they are encouraged to leave one too leading to more reviews that improve your local search ranking.

Google also emails your response to the customer when you reply giving you an additional touchpoint with your customer. Use GatherUp to respond to Google reviews directly. With little effort, you can use Google’s reach to give your reply extra lives.

Be Social with Replies to Facebook Recommendations

Facebook is a social platform providing opportunity for engagement and conversation. The switch from reviews to recommendations introduced a text modal to the recommendation process. The change prompts more review content to be posted by users, inviting business replies.

The example Facebook Recommendation reply from Evelyn’s Wine Bar below shows great personalization as the staff remembered the customer came in with her daughters, that’s a level of service customers seek out.

Reply to Reviews Left on Industry Review Sites to Create Conversation

There are many niche review platforms for industries. We monitor over 50 of them. Responding to reviews in industry platforms meets your customers where they are, makes you a part of the conversation, and leaves a trail back to your business.

Depending on your industry, these sites can be really important. If you are a hotel or bed and breakfast, then responding to your TripAdvisor reviews is a must. Make sure you know where your customers are talking about you, and reviewing you, so you can take part.

Best Practices for How to Respond to Negative Reviews

Negative reviews can be hard to receive. But, often they can be a buying signal that a customer wants to continue to do business with you. They wanted you to be the solution to their problem but you fell short. So, they shared their negative feelings with you and hope for a resolution.

Replying to negative reviews can be daunting so approach the complaint as an attempt by the customer to reconcile their feelings and that they want to continue to do business with you. See it as an opportunity, take a deep breath, and follow these tips for responding to negative reviews.

Prepare an Educated Response and Solution

• Process the negative review content. Thoroughly read the review and use the information provided to research the issue internally. Follow any internal processes, get the right people involved, and verify what solutions you are able to offer. Then, offer a solution.

Respond Promptly and Publicly

• Over 55% of consumers expect a business to reply to a review within 1 day and over 30% expect a response within 3 days. Negative reviews especially demand a swift reply and resolution to show care and action from the business. When the review is left publicly, respond publicly. It’s an opportunity to show consumers you’re capable and willing to right a wrong.

Show Gratitude, Take Responsibility, Be Empathetic, and Apologize

• Thank the reviewer for their time bringing this matter to your attention. Acknowledge what happened and resulted and take responsibility. Empathize with the customer’s feelings and apologize for what took place. Then, extend an invitation to engage in further discussion.

Offer a Solution Unique To the Situation

• Show effort and commitment to the reviewer by offering a solution that solves the issue at hand. A 5% discount on your next order may not be an adequate amend to failing a customer today. 

Here is a great negative review reply example from Austin Bike Tours. Their response to a 2-star review showed empathy, a solution and they owned the problem. They already have a great reputation with a 4.8 rating over 49 reviews, but this response shows they care and will make things right when they do fall short (which appears to be rarely).

Tips for how to Respond to Positive Reviews

Responding to positive reviews is a great opportunity to build a connection to your brand and make people feel good about being a part of it. Many businesses skip this or overlook it, but you can build a lot of goodwill with your brand fans by responding.

Think of it this way… You’ve invited all these people to your party, and this person showed up. Welcome them! Nobody likes to be left standing awkwardly wondering where to set down the casserole. Follow these tips to write an inviting reply to a positive review.

Be Welcoming and Grateful

• Greet and thank the reviewer by name. Be enthusiastic and use a conversational tone that aligns with your brand.

Show Genuine Interest

• To show you’re engaged in the conversation, comment on a detail from the review. This is an easy way to add variety to your review replies and show your customers that you’re reading what they have to say and responding to them uniquely. No canned responses here.

Be of Service to Add Value

• Based on the review, provide information the reviewer may be interested in. Let them know about a new menu item coming soon or give a reminder of an important date. Preview an upcoming offer, sale, or event and invite them to participate. Being of service adds value on top of positive customer experience, and gives future customers insight into how you do business.

Seattle Boat Company does a great job in the example below of responding to their happy customer’s 5-star review. They took the time, it’s a personalized response, and they even reinforced some of their company values for future prospects to read.

GatherUp Helps You Reply To Reviews Efficiently

GatherUp offers review monitoring, notifications, and in-app response tools to connect you to your online reviews so you can easily respond to your customers. Interested to see how it works? Schedule your demo today.