In today's digital world, a few negative reviews can have massive ramifications on a company.
Loss of customers (therefore a loss in revenue) and a poor online reputation are two of the biggest impacts a less-than-pleasant review can have.
But don’t freak out yet, because we have an answer for companies struggling with the impact of negative reviews.
It's called online reputation management and it's the best strategy for gaining a steady stream of 4 or 5-star ratings.
The main goal of online reputation management (ORM) is boosting positive reviews.
Keep reading to learn more about ORM and other strategies to help improve your reputation online.
Strategy #1: Customer Surveys
Boy, do we love customer satisfaction surveys at Drive Research (for good reason)!
Recently, it was found that 75% of brands say they measure customer engagement but aren’t exactly sure how to define it.
We’ll help with that.
When you manage online reputation, one of the best ways to keep track of how you’re scoring is through measuring customer satisfaction.
While ORM and customer surveys go together like peanut butter and jelly, a lot of companies don’t recognize this, which is only hurting them in the long run. In fact, we acknowledge customer surveys as the best secret hack for increasing Google ratings.
To reap the full benefits of managing your online reputation, it’s essential you combine these two elements.
Take this as one of many online reputation management examples.
- On an ongoing basis, recent customers are sent a survey to share details about their experience with your brands.
- Customers who share an experience on your page are directed to leave a review on a chosen review site (a Google or a Yelp, if you will). Think of it as kindly escorting your customers to a review page.
An added benefit of these immediate customer surveys is that the buyer’s interaction will be fresh. With such a small time-lapse, you’re likely to get higher-quality feedback that can give you strategic brand insight.
Give us a second to go over why customer satisfaction is so important to our ORM strategy.
When you conduct customer surveys on a regular, or semi-regular basis, you’re keeping tabs on what your audience likes and dislikes. Is there something that many people don’t like about your company? You’ll be able to know what that is with a customer satisfaction survey.
Once you know what’s working and what’s not working, you can make the necessary changes within your company.
When you eliminate the issues customers face, you lower the number of negative reviews.
For more information, watch our brief video where we discuss the ORM process.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Customer satisfaction surveys are a great way to manage online reputation. Those who rate a positive experience will be directed to a review website after answering a quick survey. Those with a negative review will also be surveyed, but without being directed to a review platform.
Responding to All Reviews
We’re begging you: please don’t just respond to positive reviews.
To truly be seen as a business that cares, you have to take on negative feedback, too. While it’s important to respond to positive feedback, getting in touch with those that have a complaint against you can nip animosity in the bud.
It’s understandable that businesses may want to brush negative feedback to the side.
However, if you’re faced with a negative review, it’s often best to face it head-on. Avoid getting an attitude–instead, respond back with a statement of understanding.
Not only will this potentially turn the customer who left a negative review (hey, you never know), but it also sheds a positive light on your company.
It’s a good look for a business to reply to negative feedback with empathy instead of anger.
Potential customers may come across this type of interaction on a reviews platform and form a good opinion as a result.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Responding to negative reviews can actually have a positive impact on your business. Be sure to respond in a calm manner, and really plan out what you’re going to say back.
Monitor Your Presence on Social Media
Understandably, it can become difficult to monitor every inquiry that’s coming through your social accounts.
You may be missing out on important posts where your business is tagged and you don’t even know. To combat this potential issue, consider using a social media monitoring platform.
When you manage online reputation, sentiment analysis is also incredibly helpful when monitoring your social media accounts.
Using sentiment analysis for easy online reputation management allows you to review social media commentary.
Again, the main idea here is to suppress potentially negative mentions directed at your company.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Don’t underestimate the speed of social media mentions your company may receive. It’s common for customers to reach out via social media, so being aware of important inquiries is essential. Through monitoring systems and sentiment analysis, negative reviews will be handled with ease.
Contact Our Online Reputation Management Company
Ready to have your business reputation managed the right way? You’re in the perfect place. Drive Research is a market research company that specializes in customer surveys combined with online reputation management.
If you’d like to learn more about our market research services, reach out through any of the ways below.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Lark Allen
As a Content Marketing Specialist, Lark has a strong background and passion for creative, professional, and journalistic writing. She is also a self-proclaimed music freak and 90s enthusiast.
Learn more about Lark, here.
