How To Use Customer Reviews To Your Advantage

If you don’t have your customers reviewing your business, then you need to start.  Customer examinations are a great way to grow your business and also monitor satisfaction.  Here are some ways that reviews and success stories can assist in improving your company.

Unhappy customers are not something a business owner wants to hear, but it happens.  It happens and it helps, even if it doesn’t feel like it.  By receiving bad reviews, you can take advantage of the situation and find out what made them unhappy and fix it.  A lot of the time, we only get bad reviews because that is when customers feel they need to retaliate, so they go online, leave horrible feedback, and relieve themselves of their anger.  That being said, instead of being ashamed or offended, you can learn from each bad review.  Really read them and see where they are coming from.  If it was a certain employee or action, address the issue and move on.  Poor reviews are a real downer, but using them to help you, is the upside.

After logging reviews for a substantial period of time, it can help you notice changes in customer satisfaction.  Are people starting to have problems with your staff on Fridays in particular?  Maybe it’s time for a pep talk.  Are customers more pleased with their experience during a certain time of year?  All these reviews can help you determine if you and your employees are getting better or worse.  Focus on all aspects of each review to come to a conclusion of what needs work and what is working well.  Don’t forget to give yourself and your employees praise when your approval rating continues to rise!

A great way to get customers motivated to review your company is to inform them that their reviews could be added to your testimonials.  Whether you have a specific area on your website or Facebook, or if you are going to run an ad or commercial, this is a wonderful way for customers to feel appreciated.  It also helps potential customers see that your business satisfied other people.  This is why you see ads on TV that have their “clients” boasting about how great whatever-it-was worked, it gets customers attention.  Customers are more apt to choose your business, with the great reviews, over a company that many not have as many, if any, reviews.

Last, but definitely not least, your employees.  Customer reviews can aid in your employees improvement.  Maybe you’ve been telling your receptionist for months that her bad attitude is unbecoming and finally a customer says something and it changes her mind completely.  Sometimes bad reviews can hurt us more than harm us, but you can find a way to have these poor evaluations turn into a learning situation instead of combating the customers opinions.  The best part about employees and customer assessments is when your workers receive praise.  Nothing is better than working so hard to make a customer happy and then hearing later that you succeeded.  This will change the dynamic in your workplace.  When your employees are happy, they are sure to please your customers.

Consider adding a technique to receiving reviews for your business.  Have them go on Google or Yelp and then check online regularly for recent updates.  You could do something as simple as having note-cards with a few questions on them and pass them out to customers.  Customer reviews are great for learning about your business, building your business, and seeing your company from your customer’s perspective.