How to Improve Customer Reviews of Your Business

With 94% of consumers saying a negative review has convinced them to avoid a business (Review Trackers, 2018), keeping on top of your own user reviews is a priority you can’t afford to ignore. And good reviews can be one of your greatest sales tools.

To help you increase and improve your business’s customer reviews, we’ve gathered our top 8 strategies for success! 
 

1. Respond to Reviews

   In the report we mentioned previously, 53% of consumers expect a business to respond to reviews – but strikingly, only 63% say a business has never responded to their review. 
   
   With this in mind, one of the first steps you can take towards improving customer reviews is to answer both positive and negative (but especially negative) reviews. If a customer has a bad experience with your business, resolving this issue at a later point by offering an apology or some kind of discount/refund in the reviews can help change a 1-star review into something a little less damaging for your overall score.
   
   It also shows potential customers who are checking reviews before they make a purchase that you care. There’s nothing quite as off-putting as a load of negative reviews that have been seemingly ignored!
    

2. Ask for More Reviews

   When you have a bad experienced, you’re more inclined to leave a bad review than you would be to leave a good review following a positive experience. 
    
   
    

   (milled.com)

   
   
   If you send out an email to existing recent customers reminding them to write a review for your business, you’re giving a bit of a nudge to the customers who will have had a good experience with your business but haven’t thought to leave a review. Putting a plan in place to ask for feedback like this every few months is a great way to continuously work on your overall rating.
    

3. Reward Reviewers

   On the subject of increasing reviews, one way to make this a little more exciting for customers (and to encourage more people to give feedback), why not reward customers when they submit a review?
   
   An easy way to do this is to enter reviewers into a prize draw to win a voucher with your company or another prize you know they’ll love!
   
   Another way is to give all customers who reward a freebie, like 10% off their next order or a free drink with every meal. Engaging with customers like this will help improve their experience with your brand anyway – treat your customers well and the positive reviews will naturally follow!
    

4. Assess Your Current Customer Experience

   If you’re still getting negative reviews and you’re not sure why, it’s time to work out what’s going wrong and use this as a learning experience. Take a look through your recent customer feedback and try to identify common themes – then take these themes and make an action plan for tackling them. 
    

5. Use the Bad Reviews to Inform Training

   Training is essential for all customer-facing roles. And if you’re struggling to improve your reviews, it’s a great place to start! 
   
   As well as ensuring all staff maintain the right tone of voice, attitude and manners expected by your company (and your customers), it can also be a great motivator for your employees. According to our recent survey, 56% of UK employees are prepared to leave their job if they aren’t provided with adequate training.
   
   Find out more about the benefits of training, the most effective types of training and how you can implement a winning training scheme no matter your budget here.
    

6. Offer Regular Incentives

   Treat them mean, keep them keen is not a phrase that’s applicable to improving customer experience, and therefore reviews. Throwing sales, offering a VIP experience to top customers, and sending out freebies ‘just to say thanks’ is a great way of getting existing customers to write feedback on review sites.
   
   If you want happy customers, why not send them fun direct mailers, like calendars, and other branded merchandise. Not only does this improve your brand presence and positivity, but it also means they might share your brand on social media, and write positive reviews.
    

7. Set Your Business Up on Google

   With 6 in 10 consumers using Google to look for reviews (Review Trackers), it has become the main way to search for online reviews. 
   
   Google My Business is a free tool for businesses to manage their online presence on Google Search and Google Maps. It’s also becoming a popular tool for customers to leave online reviews. When people Google your business, this is the little box that appears at the top, showing your company, its location and contact details.
   
   Remember that as well as review sites like Trustpilot, Yelp and TripAdvisor, Google My Business is a force to be reckoned with, so make sure you’re reply and monitoring reviews on there too! Especially since it’s the first thing to appear when people search for your business.
    
   
   
    

8. Share Existing Positive Reviews

   Another way to encourage customers to leave feedback on your products or services is to show reviews others have left – whether on your website or on your social media channels. On some sites, users can mark certain reviews as helpful or upvote them to show that they agree with the feedback. 
   
   This can help reinforce to other users that your brand can be trusted and that they should use your business. It also plays on something called social proof – which suggests, if others are doing it then so should you! So, if they see you sharing other users’ positive reviews, it will make them want to review your business too.

We hope these strategies inspire you to boost your positive customer reviews, and improve the service you offer to customers. With a positive review comes trust, and with trust a strong customer base is sure to follow. 

Once you’ve got the feedback you need from customers, the next step is to build an experience that reflects their concerns and the things they love about you. Here’s exactly how to interpret customer feedback to help shape your customer experience.