What are your customers posting about your business? Well, in today’s world of technology, customer reviews are equivalent to word-of-mouth endorsements. These opinions impact purchasing choices, brand status, and if a small business “sinks or swims.”
Meanwhile, fears about bogus reviews are increasing. As a result, every small business owner and/or manager needs to ask, “Are customer reviews actually helping our business, and how do people tell the difference between real and phony comments?”
Influence of Customer Comments
In deciding whether to buy a product and/or service, a good number of customers (business-to-business or business-to-consumer) check out online reviews. Contending against bigger businesses has always been a daunting task for small businesses. As a result, online reviews highlighting small business quality and service can sometimes even the odds against a large corporation’s huge marketing and advertising resources.
Here are a few reasons why customer reviews are critical for a small business:
- Delivers personal accounts of customer satisfaction which confirms business declarations about its products or services.
- Presents respected comments which enables a business to boost its catalog of products/services as well as customer satisfaction.
- Enhances considerably Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) which boosts the presence of a business with any search results when potential customers are seeking assorted products or services.
Advantages for Small Business
Customer reviews absolutely provide an advantage for those small businesses which provide superior products and services, reply expertly to customer input, and diligently oversee their online standing. It’s a simple formula every business should follow. That’s because outstanding service results in positive reviews, entices more customers, which produces more chances for positive reviews.
Reviews bring many unique advantages for small businesses. For example, new or under-the-radar businesses receive credibility from customer reviews. The visibility of a business becomes enhanced thanks to reviews. That’s because elaborate customer reviews are detected by such search engines as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others.
However, there’s a flip side to customer reviews which can cause problems for those businesses that don’t know how to address them. At one time or another, even the best business will receive an unfavorable comment. How a business deals with a negative review is many times more important than the actual critique itself.
Issues Regarding Bogus Reviews
On the other hand, bogus or fake reviews reflect the downside of customer reviews. Thinking they can beat the system, some businesses post positive reviews about themselves, publish damaging posts about competitors, or even urge friends to inundate the Internet with gratuitous tributes about their business. Following this path sabotages the whole review process which only leads to actual doubt among the buying public.
What’s Real and What’s Not
You don’t have to be a private eye investigator to determine a “real” review from a “fabricated” one. There are many revealing signals to tell the difference.
Analyzing trends is one sign to look for. It usually takes some time to collect real reviews for a business. Meanwhile, be wary of a rash of “five-star” appraisals within a couple of days. Any business that all of a sudden features numerous reviews, within a short period of time, could be an indicator that the business “bought” bogus reviews.
Another way to spot fake reviews is to closely read the text. A fake review usually includes general expressions which could pertain to any business. Common terms, such as “Outstanding service!” or “Highly recommended!” fall short of believability because those comments aren’t specific about the person’s experience or contact with the business’ product and/or service.
Checking on the bio of the reviewer can also determine whether a review is real or now. Several review platforms provide the opportunity to click on a reviewer’s profile bio to view that person’s review history. Trustworthy reviewers typically submit reviews for many businesses for a variety of business categories.
Receiving constructive criticism reviews is another way to highlight “real” reviews. Even though perfection is the goal for every business, that’s not reality. Potential customers should be suspicious of any business featuring a perfect “100” grade. An assortment of mostly positive ratings, along with some suggestions for improvement, looks more believable than all “5-star” grades.
Finally, reviews look to be genuine when a business owner or manager responds with full explanations to BOTH positive and negative comments. Those business owner/manager replies indicate that real conversations happened.
Creating a Reliable Review Approach
So, what should a business do to encourage real and not fake reviews? The simple answer… make the whole review process both effortless and beneficial for customers to tell their stories about their experiences with the business.
Here’s the blueprint every business should follow to accomplish that goal:
- Ask for a review soon after a positive experience by the customer.
- Seek sincere comments instead if explicitly wanting positive reviews.
- Reply to all reviews, whether they’re good or bad. This proves to that the business actually wants to hear the customer’s comments.
- Respond to negative reviews and recognize the customer’s concern, express regret if suitable, and clarify how the matter was dealt with.
- Create a seamless review process by supplying direct links to the review channel.
- Do NOT provide rewards for positive reviews.
Lasting Importance from Real Reviews
Creating a significant number of legitimate reviews doesn’t happen overnight. A consistent number of reviews over time paints the picture of constant service to real customers. Having a history of positive reviews is difficult for the competition to ignore or copy.
Meanwhile, customer reviews help a business with its market research efforts. Studying what customers write, both the good and bad, allows a business to learn what it’s doing right and what it needs to work on. There’s no better data for a business to examine than what its customer base thinks.
Final Analysis
So, what are your customers posting about your business? Well, customer reviews are helpful, but only if the reviews are valid. It takes time to build a base of bona fide customer reviews. When a foundation of reviews is established, a business is sure to reap the benefits of those reviews for the foreseeable future.
