News about a California law firm taking Yelp to court over defamatory user reviews in the US broke this month highlighting ongoing pain some businesses are facing with their online reputation. San Francisco lawyer, Dawn Hassell, had accused a client of posting defamatory statements against her on the online platform. Ultimately, the supreme court ordered that the web platform was not responsible for the user-generated reviews and that freedom of speech and authenticity of consumer feedback are what matters most.
In a local example, a customer has recently called out Freedom Furniture for sending her a product with excessive packaging - both environmentally unfriendly and hard to get rid of, with few options for disposal of a large quantity of plastic, cardboard and styrofoam. With a current public movement towards sustainability, this could have been a bad look for the brand.
The fact is, customer feedback and reviews are here to stay. And not only that, but they are important drivers for a business's brand value. As mentioned in the recent KPMG report “today’s customers are better informed, better connected and more demanding than ever before. Customer experience is overtaking price and product as the number one brand differentiator.” In other words, whatever the quality of customer experiences that your organisation provides is, will guide your online reputation. It is this reputation that will determine the amount of business you generate in the future, consider these sobering stats:
- One happy customer will refer 8 customers. However, one angry customer will cause approximately 21 anti-referrals. Source.
- 88% of consumers have read reviews to determine the quality of a local business. Source.
- 90% of dissatisfied customers don't return if the problem is not resolved to their satisfaction. Source.
- 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Source.
Even though negative reviews stay online forever and factor into your reputation score on platforms like Yelp, Google, Facebook and countless others, there are easy strategies to make sure you generate great reviews every time and come back from negative feedback online. Without further ado, here is the holy trinity of online reputation:
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Provide great customer experiences
That one seems obvious, right? But, by providing a great experience for your customers, you are sure to steer clear of those bad reviews and build a great brand, creating advocates along the way. Now, nobody is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. The key is to face up to any bad customer situations, apologise when needed and quickly look to turn their experience around. What makes a customer unhappy could be the most innocolous little misunderstanding, but addressing it quickly will let them know that you are responsive and care about them as your customer.
Actively listening to the voice of customer and collecting feedback constantly will put you in a great position to identify both bad and great experiences and learn about your customers - what you’re doing great and what you should be doing better. There are several ways you could gather feedback and it can be tricky to determine the right way your your organisation - so do yourself a favour and download this free guide on customer feedback.
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Create great reviews
By putting your customers, especially your promoters, in a position to give you a great review after a positive experience. As you know your customers best, you can identify online platforms where they are most likely to look up your brand’s reputation. Once you’ve identified this digital shopfront, encourage as many customers as possible to leave reviews for you.
This can be done in store by your shop staff or digitally through email invites, social posts, website prompts, basically any device or form that makes it easy for your customer and seamlessly integrates with their buying experience.
If you use a CRM, database management tools or a Customer Feedback / Net Promoter Score platform, you can segment your audience by selecting the ones happy with their experience and invite them to give your business a review online. This will also have the flow-on effect of encouraging other visitors to leave their reviews.
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Respond to detractors
“67% of customer churn is preventable if the customer issue was resolved at the first engagement (source).” Unhappy customers are easier to recover and bring back if their concerns are addressed quickly. Perhaps even more important is to be seen by others looking up a negative review, as responding positively to that customer and looking to improve their situation. This is exactly what Freedom furniture (above) did with the customer who raised the packaging issue. They responded quickly, apologised and offered an explanation as well as a solution earning themselves kudos and turning around a poor customer experience.
We’ve previously dived deeper into the huge potential customer complaints have for every business and how to exploit that potential - that guide can be downloaded here.
Download our eBook "Definitive Guide to Customer Feedback Methods":
