Why You Should Always Reply To Reviews
Collecting reviews is one way of obtaining customer insights and tracking your business’s performance. It’s a significant component in building and maintaining your brand’s reputation. However, business owners shouldn’t only get feedback, they should also respond to them. Regardless of whether a review is good or bad, each consumer input warrants a response. It’s essential for business owners to know how to handle dissatisfied customers and resolve reported conflicts.
A brand’s way of interacting with its audience can heavily affect its image. Being deemed as a responsive and attentive company can help your business heighten brand awareness, increase customer engagement, build trust and loyalty among its consumer base, and even improve its Google ranking.
How It Affects Your Ranking
Replying to reviews can affect two things: your brand’s reputation and your overall presence in Google searches. Both of these go hand-in-hand in enabling your business to thrive online. Cultivating a better brand perception can foster audience trust, while increased brand activity can help your product or service become more visible.
Not only will potential customers be able to see your brand’s personality through your replies, but you’ll also have an opportunity to boost your SEO ranking. Sending carefully crafted replies allows you to accomplish both without seeming hard sell or overbearing.
How to Properly Reply to Reviews
It’s important to note that you’ll be directly interacting with your audience, and following templates or using cookie-cutter replies can make your brand sound tone deaf or robotic. So, while the following points are things that you should always consider before writing a reply, it would be best to always customize your responses and to sound as human as possible.Here are some tips you can use as a guide in responding to reviews.
- Always say thanks – Whether they give a good or a bad review, express gratitude to your customers for doing business with you and for taking the time to give you feedback. This can help make them feel valued and, perhaps, pave the way for drawing in life-long customers.
- Apologize whenever necessary – In responding to a negative review, acknowledge your customer’s issues, and, when applicable and possible, offer solutions. Apologizing can help appease them and show that your brand cares about each customer and knows how to take accountability for their disappointing experiences.
- Leave some keywords in your message – As mentioned, you can use reviews to bolster your SEO by including keywords in your messages. However, avoid overdoing this lest you might get hit by a penalty or risk sounding unauthentic.
Make Review Management Easier
If you’re overwhelmed by the amount of reviews you’re getting, consider signing up with Reviews911. Our review management platform helps you monitor and address customer feedback in one convenient and accessible platform.
Sign-up here and start monitoring and replying to all of the reviews you get from anywhere you are.