Before making a purchase decision, potential customer reviews will likely ask their network for personal recommendations. Thanks to the internet, people’s networks are bigger and more informed. Review sites like Amazon Review, Better Business Bureau (BBB), Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Angie’s List have thousands of online reviews to inform customers. Moreover, people can ask for recommendations on social media platforms like Facebook.
Customer feedback is vital for any business. It will highlight any features of your products or services that need improvement. Good reviews can also be placed on advertisements or digital signage to help improve your branding. Additionally, listening to your buyers makes them feel appreciated and valued. However, you may need to provide incentives for customers to write reviews. You can give a discount, reward, or coupon in exchange for a review.
Positive reviews will also give potential buyers a feel of what to expect and provide additional promotion for your business. Therefore, you should focus on acquiring customer reviews to take advantage of benefits like:
1. Improve Customer Service
The modern customer makes purchasing decisions based on the experiences they have with services and products. Customer satisfaction has become a huge deal when dealing with customers. As a result, more and more companies are investing time and money into fulfilling customer expectations.
Firstly, online reviews will provide insight into the kind of experience your customers have with your products and employees. Negative reviews will help you improve customer service. Similarly, positive customer reviews will highlight what you’re doing right.
Secondly, customer testimonials will enable you to spot patterns, trends, and opportunities. You’ll notice that many customers complain about the same things, such as late shipping, rude employees, or low quality. It’s essential to analyze your business reviews to identify opportunities for change.
Once you resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently, you can look forward to better reviews. Keep in mind that an unhappy customer can bring negativity to your brand, which is why you should take every review seriously.
2. Inform Changes to Products and Services
Customer reviews will highlight the aspects of your products and services that require improvement. When introducing new products or services, you may miss some of their imperfections. Various online platforms such as Wagl provide honest customer reviews and recommendations on businesses and their products.
Even if you have discussed your product’s features a thousand times with your team, your potential buyers may reject it if it doesn’t satisfy their desires. Therefore, you should seek the opinions of your potential customers to ensure your product will perform well in the market. Besides, customer expectations evolve over time, and you need to add features that meet these changing needs.
Once you gather customer reviews, you can determine what’s working well and what needs to change. Keep in mind that a bad review can affect your potential sales. Therefore, you should tweak your products and services until they satisfy the end-user.
3. Boost Credibility and Social Proof
If you have ever purchased a product based on another person’s recommendation, that’s social proof at work. Simply put, social proof is using third-party influence to appeal to potential customers. For example, you can place an industry expert’s review prominently on your testimonial page to show credibility and influence buyers. Clever brands have recognized that social proof promises enormous growth potential and are investing a lot of money into enhancing their online reputation.
Online reviews have become the most critical social proof for modern business. A testimonial or star rating will influence the buying decision of your potential customer and your bottom line. For instance, a person looking for a good restaurant near them will most likely read Yelp or Google reviews. If you run a restaurant, you’ll miss out on their business if your business profile has a low rating or many negative reviews.
When a customer visits a review website, they’ll base their decision on the experiences of previous customers. For example, they’ll check how long people waited to see a doctor when comparing clinics. In addition to shaping buying habits, online reviews also influence how people perceive different brands. If you have plenty of positive reviews, a new customer will be more likely to leave a favorable testimonial.
4. Encourage Customer Loyalty
Encouraging customer feedback is one way to build customer loyalty. Positive reviews will capture more customers, improve your search rankings, and enhance your online brand image. By allowing customers to rate your products and services, you’ll create long-term relationships with them.
Sometimes, brands try to hide negative reviews. However, customers are looking for genuine testimonials, and they’ll be suspicious of a brand that only has positive reviews. Negative complaints are an opportunity to show how attentive and responsive you are, and the way you deal with them will impact your brand image.
The modern customer expects brands to respond to their feedback. You can reinforce positive reviews with rewards or a thank you to show a customer that you’re listening. A simple improvement of the rate at which you respond to reviews can have a tremendous effect on customer satisfaction.
5. Improve Search Engine Rankings
Search engines trust customer reviews. Positive feedback tells Google that your product or service is of high quality, resulting in a higher ranking for your business. This is why local businesses with positive reviews will rank well even with low-quality link profiles.
Every time a buyer leaves a review, Google gets more content related to your business. As a result, you’ll get more keywords that link to your business or products. Additionally, Google will understand your business better, resulting in higher rankings for specific keywords. What’s more, responding to feedback will increase your interactions with customers and show Google that you care about your buyers.
Reviews also impact your website’s bounce rate. Your visitors will be more likely to leave your website without performing any action if there are no reviews. A high bounce rate will lead to lower rankings, which will affect your website’s performance on Google. Therefore, you should encourage your buyers to leave reviews on your website, social media profiles, and any review platform they use.
In Summary
In recent years, the rate at which customers are writing and accessing online reviews has risen tremendously. Feedback influences people’s purchasing habits, which is why you should encourage your customer base to rank your products or services. Customer reviews will give you a competitive edge, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, increase site traffic, and boost your sales.
