We’ve all had good and bad experiences when it comes to making purchases or visiting a place of commerce. Most people would agree that even when they’ve had a bad experience, it can still be turned around with good customer service and the right remedial action. Any small to medium business should embrace reviews as a way to capture customer feedback. Using the positive reviews as a way to help boost business and shout about their wins and the negative or neutral ones as a way to learn, grow and embrace change. Let’s dig into why.
Online reviews drive traffic to your website
The more online reviews your business receives, the more visibility your business has online. Search Engines take ratings from multiple sites into consideration when returning it’s search results back to a customer. Meaning that the more review sites your business appears on and the more reviews are left on those sites about your business, the higher up the search engine rankings your business will appear, depending on the search terms. The trick here is to ensure that your business is registered with appropriate review sites for it’s sector. For example, here at Flex4 OPS, we have a profile set up with https://www.designrush.com/agency/software-development in order to capture customer reviews in relation to software development companies.
Reviews influence purchasing decisions
With so much available information online now, it’s easy for consumers to do their research before parting with their hard earned money. With 67% of people agreeing that reviews help them make an educated decision before going ahead with a purchasing decision, it’s a no brainer to improve your brand reputation by utilising online reviews.
How you respond shows transparency
We’ve all read a bad review. We all know how it can sway our purchasing decisions between one option or another. Often times though, a consumer doesn’t have another option and this is where there is an opportunity to claw back your reputation in the face of bad review. How you respond to a bad review can be as influential as the review itself. If you respond with humility and a genuine desire to rectify the situation, this shows potential customers that you are a company who cares and even if things go wrong, you will be there to put things right. Equally, responding to positive reviews with gratitude and regard also shows you care about your customers feedback and are checking in on a regular basis.
An opportunity to grow and learn
It’s super important to remain open minded and listen to your customer’s experiences. Heeding the feedback from your customers is a way to find out what you are doing well and not so well as a company. You may find that there are common themes or trends and this is where you can make changes based on what you know as a fact isn’t being executed in the best way possible. Sometimes conceptual thinking or allowing new ideas in can be a way to improve customer experience without even needing to invest additional money. Sometimes it can be as simple as a quick fix. Other times, it might require longer term planning. But capturing reviews will certainly help guide your business based on your own customers pains.
A final note
For some small to medium business, the digital world can be overwhelming and budgets are slim which can mean the time for managing digital and content marketing is less than desirable. However, even just devoting an hour a week to checking in with a review site or social media can mean the difference between acknowledging a customer or not. This easily translates into attracting prospective customers as well. Building links to your business is a valuable tool and one that can reap huge rewards so embrace reviews and see where they could take your business.
Flex4 OPS
Here at Flex4, we specialise in helping Print Industry businesses. To talk to us about a digital strategy for your business or just find out about how we could help make your business more visible online, give us a call on 0208 031 0835 or email us at info@onlineprintsolution.co.uk