How many times have you gone online to make a purchase or research a brand and reviewed company ratings?
Often right? You are no different than your potential customers who are actively researching and forming opinions about your brand before they even contact you.
We call them stealth customers. You know they are researching you. Yet, they have not reached out to your organization through a contact form, phone call, email, or simply came to your retail location.
That's because, before making a purchase, customers want to feel comfortable and confident in your product or service.
And there is no better way for a customer to understand how good you are than to review others' ratings of you.
Understanding how peers rate your product or service can enlighten potential customers. This is why it is essential to have a strong rating on sites like Google because they can significantly impact and prevent you from acquiring leads and customers.
Still don't understand the impact of improving customer ratings with an online reputation management (ORM) company?
Here are a few shocking statistics that emphasize the impact of positive online reviews.
Did you know?
- 95% of online shoppers read customer reviews before making a purchase (source)
- Businesses with a minimum of 200 reviews generate twice as much revenue (source)
- Consumers who interact with reviews are 115% more likely to convert (source)
- 3.3 is the minimum star rating of a business consumers would engage with (source)
- 72% of people asked to leave a review will do so (source)
What is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?
ORM is creating a formal process to invite customers to offer feedback on your product, service, or brand and redirecting them to leave a review on popular rating websites like Google, Yelp, etc.
A reputation management company like Drive Research can help you decipher which sites make the most sense for your brand (i.e. Healthgrades for healthcare organizations).
Through this, negative reviews are intercepted and collected so your organization can respond and take action. The outreach and asking for feedback intercepts a customer before they go online to publish negative feedback.
It does not prevent all negative feedback from being published online but it:
- Increases the likelihood of intercepting the negative feedback before the customer goes to a site like Google.
- Provides your brand with many more positive ratings and reviews than you would receive without a formal process in place.
This way, if a negative review is posted it will be swapped out by the sheer number of positive reviews online.
Want to really cut down on the chance of negative reviews? The answer is found in customer satisfaction surveys.
These surveys ask your base what they like and dislike about your company. For instance, you may not know it, but there might be an aspect about your business that customers really dislike. Through a customer survey, this will be revealed.
Going forward, you can then make the necessary changes. When it comes time to leave a review, you’ll have a higher chance of receiving positive feedback because of this.
For a quick recap, watch our video below.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Creating a formal process for reputation management is the best secret hack for increasing Google reviews for your business. It improves your chances of having more positive ratings, largely overcompensating for any poor ratings.
How does Online Reputation Management (ORM) work?
An online reputation management company works with you to set up an automated process to exchange customer sample on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
There are ways to automate this customer sample upload, to limit any manual work on your end. This can be set up between our team and your system.
Here is how our team helps improve customer reviews for our clients:
- Our company works with your team to design a few custom questions for the mini-feedback survey before launch.
- Once Drive Research receives the customer contacts from your organization a survey invitation is sent to your customers via email or text.
- Customers go to the link on their desktop, tablet, or phone and are asked a question about their experience.
- If their experience is rated positively, they are redirected to a website or websites of choice to offer an online rating and a review so the information can be viewed by the public.
- If the experience is rated negatively, the customer remains on the survey platform and is asked additional questions about the experience.
- This feedback is passed to your organization giving you the opportunity to review the case and respond appropriately.
- This audience is not redirected to a website for a public review, thereby intercepting the negative rating all while still collecting the critical feedback.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Create short customer satisfaction surveys to gauge whether people were satisfied or unsatisfied with their experiences. At the end of the survey, happy customers are redirected to an online review site and unhappy customers remain on the survey, never redirected to a public review platform.
Using a reputation management firm
Online ratings for your company should not be underestimated.
All companies should have a formal process in place to collect and grow customer feedback online regardless of whether you are B2C or B2B.
No matter the type of purchase, customers, and prospects will go online to research you before you even know they are considering your organization.
While there are a few other approaches to improving your online reputation, using customer surveys is perhaps the most effective. And who better to execute a customer survey than a market research company?
Collecting high-quality, honest customer feedback is at the heart of what research firms do.
Using this approach to ORM allows you to regularly check in with your audience and measure satisfaction levels in real-time. Better yet, the insights gathered can also help your team fuel strategy, marketing, and messaging.
For instance, in addition to boosting your positive online review profile, you'll also collect valuable data on what drives positive ratings for your brand and you'll have the opportunity to review pain points and issues which impact negative ratings.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A formal ORM process with a market research company carries many benefits. They are experts at survey design, programming, fieldwork, and analysis allowing you to get the best of both worlds: improved online reviews and up-to-date customer data.
Recommended Reading: Why You Should Use a Market Research Firm for Online Reputation Management
Looking to improve your customer ratings through an online reputation management tool (ORM)? Consider using a professional survey organization to filter and publish better scores.
Drive Research is an online reputation management (ORM) company located in New York. We work with organizations across the country to set up regular ORM programs to filter and publish high scores on sites like Google, Yelp, and others.
Interested in taking advantage of our ORM services? Contact our team for a proposal.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
George Kuhn
George is the Owner & President of Drive Research. He has consulted for hundreds of regional, national, and global organizations over the past 15 years. He is a CX certified VoC professional with a focus on innovation and new product management.
Learn more about George, here.
