Previously we’ve explored how to NOT respond to reviews and in other blogs we’ve stressed the importance of responding in a timely manner to online reviews. In this blog we’re going to concentrate on how TO respond to reviews!
So, here are our top tips of how to respond to online reviews:
- Aim to always respond promptly when a customer of yours leaves you a review. As you scroll down our page of reviews, you’ll see that 99.9% of the time we respond on the same day that our customer has left us a review.
- Respond to every review. It’s tempting to ignore the less glowing reviews and concentrate on only responding to the very best ones. Please don’t fall into this temptation! Respond to every online review as your authentic self, thanking the flowing reviewers profusely and aiming to solve any issues reported by the less than glowing online reviews
Please remember that businesses who respond to their reviews achieve 80% higher conversion rates. Further, a study by Harvard Business School found that responding to reviews directly correlated with a higher star rating. Responding to online reviews also helps you rank higher on search engines with Google confirming that when you regularly respond to your customers’ reviews it also helps with SEO. Responding to your online reviews also shows your customers that:
- You genuinely care about their feedback
- You’re accessible to them
- You’re personally involved in your business
- You’re monitoring your review feed and it isn’t ‘just’ there as a marketing or sales ploy