Well-Documented research says, “About 91 percent of the people are either regularly or occasionally reading customers’ reviews.” What’s more, 84 percent of them trust them as much as they trust their friends’ recommendation. Having read these figures, it is not hard to evaluate the growing importance of customer reviews. In this article discuss 4 reasons why responding to online reviews is a must.
As time goes by, more and more brands are taking a keen interest to respond to the customer reviews at the earliest. Wondering why businesses these days are always on the go to join the customer conversation? Here are the top four reasons why they are doing so:
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Enhances trust with potential and current clients
When people look for your business and find you promptly responding to the customer reviews, it immediately uplifts their trust level on you. Because, that way, you are humanizing your brand. People get the impression that your brand is not all about logos and colors. There are many businesses which have grown leaps and bounds just because they have mastered the skill of personalization.
Moreover, your responses convey to them that you have a high regard for your customers. On top of that, there is nothing more refreshing than people seeing a brand keeping its calm while engaging in negative reviews.
In this day and age, everybody is stuck with so many things in life. Yet, if someone is sparing time to write and you don’t consider their opinion worthy enough of a reply, then you are digging the hole for your business. Not replying to customer reviews when a fair proportion of them expect a reply then it could be a big blow to mutual trust.
Nothing freaks out millennial more than being ignored. In a nutshell, response to the reviews, regardless of good or bad ones, is the first step in the direction of a healthy relationship between a customer and a brand.
It improves ranking
Not just customers, but Google seems to love responses to reviews as well. Yes, Google rewards you for responding to Google reviews. A study conducted by Harvard Business Review confirms this claim. Google wants to keep things as much authentic as possible. So the businesses which communicate to the customers through reviews are more likely to be trusted by the Google algorithm. As a result, “silent-businesses” are put on the back-burner, and your ranking gets promoted.
Guess what; the buck does not stop at the organic SEO. Local SEO is also positively affected when businesses take a moment and respond to the reviews. According to Google local ranking survey 2018, Google gives a share of 15.44 percent to the review signals in the process of local business ranking. In 2015 Google valued reviews only 10.8 percent. Giving more share to reviews indicates that Google wants businesses to stay right on top of the responses.
It also goes to show that reviews are going to play an even major role in terms of ranking shortly. Because they are considered as credibility indicators, and Google does not want its users to experience anything less than the best it can offer.
You can gain valuable insight
No businessman can deny the value of sincere feedback. In fact, businesses are conducting researches day in and day out just to know where they are heading. Social media is flooded with such surveys. Well, reviews are also a kind of feedback. If you respond to the reviews, then you can get something valuable out of the exchange which might have the capacity to take your business to new heights. You never know when something extraordinary might come out of a short conversation.
Especially, engage more eagerly with people who are more critical about you because unhappy customers can really tell you where you are going wrong. For example, whether your content is up to the mark or how fast is your website speed. Alright, you have analytics in place to reveal all such information, but there is nothing like coming straight out of a customer.
How can you improve when you have no clue about your mistakes? So take these unhappy customers as mistake identifiers. So much so, many brands request such customers to take the conversation offline on mobile or email to communicate with them at length. To sum up, smart businesses treat reviews as opportunities.
Responding to reviews adds in your reputation
Brands are all about reputation. Sometimes they might even compromise on the quality of their product but never on their reputation. Because when your reputation is sky high, it gives you a margin in product quality. Businesses invest thousands of dollars to build up their reputation. The bad news is that all the hype about your brand can be ruined if you are falling short of responses to customer reviews. Once the reputation is affected, the bottom line is sure to witness the unwanted consequences.
As we have mentioned above, as many as above 90 percent of the customers are constantly keeping an eye on the customer reviews. That’s a staggering number. People can easily single out which brands are giving attention to their customers and which brands are ignoring their queries. About 40 percent of the customers form an opinion by reading 1 out of 3 reviews.
While reading reviews, they also observe how brands are engaging with them. People don’t keep to themselves what they see. If they are impressed with your responses, then word-of-mouth marketing comes into play. People will share it in their friend and family circle, and the chain will keep on prolonging. The best thing about this mode of marketing is that it infuses trust like nothing else because it comes directly from the people we trust.
Closing note
It is amazing that sometimes a seemingly tiny looking feature can have such a dramatic impact on your business. Same stands true for customer review responses. They have the capacity to either make or break your business. Having discussed the core benefits of customer review responses, you must prioritize them in your marketing strategy. A review is never meaningless; make it a point to join the conversation by any mean.
We hope these 4 reasons why responding to online reviews is a must. have been helpful, and be sure to leave your comments below.