Increasing online reviews for your product or service is a great way to spread brand awareness and improve overall adoption or customer traffic.
For your business, reviews can help pinpoint problems and also encourage exceptional service by recognizing team members. For your customers, reviews can help them determine which product or service best fits their needs and expectations.
With that said, reviews are a pivotal factor in driving business success and getting your name out there., So, in order to help your business generate more traffic, we’ve compiled 4 simple ways to help you increase online reviews:
Respond and interact with reviewers
It’s important when receiving reviews that your business takes the time to acknowledge every single one, even if they are negative reviews. Your attitude and how you handle reviews online can say alot about your business, and help others determine if they want to use your service or product. If you ignore or forget to respond, you send a clear message that you don’t prioritize customer experience, which is a reputation you want to avoid.
In addition, responding to reviews has proven to improve your overall rating. According to Inc.com in a data set of more than ten thousand hotel reviews, “researchers found that when hotels start responding, they receive 12 percent more reviews and their ratings increase, on average, by 0.12 stars”. Being efficient at responding is then imperative to boosting your brands reputation online. In order to aid your response rates, try scheduling in time for team members to respond to reviews or try adopting a program that lets you see customer comments online periodically.
Prompt a review right after their visit
Prompting a customer with a survey reminder shortly after their interaction with your brand is a great way to garner more feedback. Not only does it show that you value the customers opinion on your business but it also increases the chances of them actually writing a review.
What’s more, if you prompt them right after their visit the experience will still be fresh in their mind. With Loop Messenger™ your employees can schedule messages for customers so they they are send out immediately after the customer has interacted with your brand. This ensures your team members don’t have to consistently keeps tabs on your customers and manually send out surveys every time a customer leaves.
When crafting your messages, a friendly and encouraging “We hope you enjoyed your experience with us today. Let us know how we did on Trip Advisor/Yelp!” is a non-intrusive way to encourage your customers to write reviews.
Utilize a large review platform
Integrating with a large review platform helps you spread brand awareness and generate more high quality reviews.
TripAdvisor® for example, makes it easier for customers to search reviews but also enhances their trust with you when you suggest sharing their reviews on a large public forum. With Loop®s TripAdvisor integration, customers can actually write a review directly within a conversation thread. This allows customers to write a review for your business right from within the conversation window when they are messaging you, without having to filter through TripAdvisor to find your property. It makes it easy for your customer and more efficient for your business.
After all, the easier it is to complete the review, the more likely a customer is to do it.
Provide exceptional customer service
Never underestimate the power of exceptional customer service.
Customers notice when you are going above and beyond for them and if a customer has an amazing experience they’ll want to go out of their way to talk about it. Brands that equip their teams with the skills they need to provide impeccable service and encourage customer gratitude will position themselves to receive more reviews.
Have a team member follow up with the customer during multiple touch points of the brand interaction. If that team member has continuously given stellar service, when the experience comes to an end they can remind the customer to leave a review. With the positive relationship that was fostered, the customer will feel a lot less reluctant to provide a review.Seeing a negative review might be disheartening at first. However,when you take the time to read them and see it as constructive, you’ll learn more about your customer base and how to provide consistently better service.
By using these 4 simple tips you can increase online reviews for your product or service, spread brand awareness, and improve overall workflow.
