To use customer feedback for your business plans effectively, you must encourage your customers to make their assessments so that you can respond to reviews. When customers write reviews on your website or social media page, they show honesty. However, if you don't have the intention of responding to their reviews, they will not waste time and energy to submit a review on your website. Therefore, you should know the graceful way of responding to negative reviews.
Regardless of how bad the comment is, you can make it constructive by responding to reviews. If you remain silent over the feedback, it’s still a response but it wouldn’t help your business at all.
If customers are unhappy, they don't necessarily want you to respond to negative reviews published on your website. However, they do expect you to take some practical action. Negative feedback is usually a complaint and must be taken seriously. If you are receiving too many complaints from your customers, it may harm your online presence.
How to Respond to Positive Reviews
1) A Thank You Message
A "Thank You" message is the simplest way of responding to positive reviews. If a customer talks positively about your company, it wouldn't feel right if you don't thank them. As a website owner, you should thank your customers immediately so they know their kind deed didn't go unnoticed. On the other hand, if your customers are happy, they don't need to share a positive review about your company. Hence, you must share your appreciation and make it personal.
Customers who submit a positive review after buying your business product or service are happy about the quality. They feel their invested money is worth it and will convey a positive message about your brand. If you respond with a brief statement, such as "you are welcome," it would be appropriate but won't benefit your business in the long run.
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The best way to respond to reviews offering thanks is to offer something to your customers that urges them to return to your website and buy again. For example, you can offer them a new product trial or a coupon on their next purchase.
Welcoming them to your website and informing them about your upcoming sale is one of the best ways of doing it. This approach increases your average customer lifetime value. It is cheaper to maintain your existing customers than to gain new ones in the eCommerce world.
2) Target the Number of Reviews to Respond
As a website owner, your objective is always to respond to all of your positive feedback. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible, and you must be more selective. The selection of reviews depends on your company's specific circumstances. For example, if you have just started a new business company, you would like to engage with as many customers as possible.
However, if you are an established brand and receive thousands of reviews monthly, it would be better to respond to a certain percentage of those reviews. You may clog up your social media feeds if you respond to all the reviews. Eventually, you could put off all your other customers, who will consider you nothing more than a self-promoter.
It would be best if you always tried to find a balance that works for you. As a general general rule, respond to reviews where customers have taken the time to investigate why they are happy with your service. On the other hand, you can choose not to respond to brief messages, such as "Good work" or those who leave a star rating but no details.
3) Suggest to Review
Customers may feel comfortable communicating with you after completing their purchase because they are satisfied with your customer service. They may want to give you some suggestions regarding your business.
Successful entrepreneurs always respond to reviews and take them positively. Recommendations are never made out of criticism or frustration, but they are made to make your customer’s experience and your business better. If you consider these suggestions seriously, you may have to generate new product ideas or need a new product line extension.
The best way of responding to positive reviews is to acknowledge the suggestion you have received from your customer. You can thank your customers and tell them that you will consider their ideas and try to implement them if they are feasible for your business.
Factors that Generate Negative Reviews
1) Product Quality
Complaints about product quality are the most common type of negative review that you can get. If your customers are not satisfied with your products, you have to respond to reviews that are negative. These complaints are essential for your business, especially if submitted on social media.
Before responding to negative reviews, you must have clarity about your exchange policy, refund policy, and terms of service. If you feel the customer's complaint is justified and the product is defective, take accountability, take back the product, and refund, or exchange the item.
2) Customer Service
When responding to negative reviews about your customer service, you must pay attention to your customer support staff. It is not a good approach to criticize your staff members without having all the facts at your disposal. Instead, you should analyze all the problems among your staff members individually before pointing fingers at them.
The complaint is usually about the customer service before and after the purchase. If your customers are unhappy with your service, you must respond to reviews by taking accountability and training your staff correctly. For example, some customers don't like to be interrupted while shopping, whereas others need more help picking the items. Your team should observe how customers feel comfortable and serve them accordingly.
How to Respond to Negative Reviews
1) Acknowledge Your Mistake
Customization is crucial throughout your entire customer journey. Customers want to receive individual care and feel that companies look after their unique preferences and problems. To respond to reviews and provide a good customer experience, you must acknowledge the mistakes your customers have mentioned in their negative reviews.
With this approach, you will maintain a good relationship with your customers and send a message to others that this topic of concern won't be an issue in the future.
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For example, suppose a customer has difficulty navigating previous ads on their mobile interface. In that case, you can acknowledge this issue by saying, "We are sorry that you have encountered inappropriate ads,." It is not an automated response, but it will indicate that the company has read the negative review.
2) Be Organized in Your Approach
If your team members are careless in how they respond to reviews, it could hamper your business reputation. Setting up a review policy for responding to negative reviews is essential.
In the ideal world, you will have a dedicated staff with proper training and experience. If things are not clicking, you can use a few techniques. You can create a checklist of all the factors you should include in a review response. For example:
- Apologize
- Offer a workaround if required
- Direct to customer support
Templates don't work as they make review responses impersonal. However, this approach will ensure that your reviews contain everything rather than being considered incomplete responses.
Strikingly’s Product Review Feature
Whether you receive positive or negative reviews, it is crucial to understand how to respond to reviews. If you receive both reviews, displaying them on your online store can be useful.
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Strikingly is a professional website builder that allows you to display your products and give concrete product descriptions in an organized way. In addition, we will enable you to request online reviews and display them alongside your products. Strikingly fully understands the importance of displaying online reviews on your store. For that reason, we have a feature that allows you to display your reviews next to your products.
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Enabling the product reviews will allow you to turn on the automated email system on your website so you can send email requests to your customers after they complete the purchase. They will receive the email request one week after they have completed the transaction.
Image taken from Strikingly
Once your customers receive an email request, they will see the above image in their email. When they click the "Write Review" button, they will return to the website, where they can write their name alongside their review about your products.
Conclusion
As a website owner, you should always check in with your customers. If your customers are unhappy with your services, you must know how to respond to negative reviews submitted. On the other hand, you can tell your customers to share their experience of your website if they are happy.
Increasing your online presence and promoting positive reviews will ensure that your negative reviews don't stand out. If you receive a negative review, have no fear. Take it as a challenge and as an opportunity to show that you care about your customer’s experience.
If you want to display your product reviews and respond to reviews online, make sure that you build a quality website on Strikingly to get started. If you have any queries about our features and tools, you can contact our Happiness Officers anytime during the day.
