Reputation Management Company

How to Get Good Reviews

Many companies wonder how to get good reviews, so that they can keep a good reputation. After all, the trust factor, in Google's search algorith, is born of the trust demonstrated in your reviews. If you have all bad reviews, you have no trust. If you only have 5-star reviews, you have a lot of trust.

So the question remains, how to get good reviews?

1. Provide High-Quality Goods and Services

This is probably the easiest way to get good reviews. If your products and services are truly of a high-quality, getting good reviews will be natural. More importantly, giving bad reviews will also be a very unnatural act. This means that the only negative reviews you may receive will likely be from naturally-disgruntled or easily-angered people, who like to complain about things anyways.

The goods and services you offer are the only thing you control anyways, so all of your time should be devoted to making your business perfect. This is vital to the success of your strategy.

I know, I know, you are doing this already, that is why you are looking for help.

2. Get Feedback From Your Staff & Your Customers

If you are getting complaints from in-house or from your customers about any portion of your goods or services, you want to spend time getting feedback. Get the feedback from both your employees and your customers.

The feedback does not need to be formal. It needs to be sincere. Don't worry about getting written feedback or handing out surveys. Of course you can do this if your employee and client base is large enough to get a good sample. However, do not feel it is necessary, in order to complete this step.

What you want to do is find out if there is a weak-point in your products, your processes, your SOPs, or even in your staff. Sometimes, little issues or irritations cause major flare-ups that create previously unknown problems. Genuinely seek to get to the root of these issues and address them.

Be Customer-Centric

There is a company that recieved negative feedback from clients about their customer service. The owner unfortunately chose to make excuses instead of changes, with respect to the employee they received the bulk of the complaints about. They were very protective of their staff but not as considerate of the experience of their customer.

In that case had an apology been issued and the staff member been trained to be more customer-centric or simply moved to a position where they were not the primary customer-interface, the issue may have been resolved. However, what happened is a common occurence. They got a 1-star review for the interaction.

This is not an isolated incident in which a business-owner chooses (knowningly or not) sides against their customer or client. In fact, this happens the same but different, in a lot of businesses. They choose not staff but money or their own opinions over customers. The money choice unfortunately happens too often and it is one of the easiest to resolve. Simply refund the money.

A business-owner had a customer order a "special-order" item that you must pay in-advance for. Now this particular customer was only ordering this item for a specific event or occassion. After that event, it was of no use to them. Well circumstances arose and the item was late in arriving. The customer requested the money back, but was told no, since the item was "special-order". The owner found out about the "special-event" in the review.

We all know how that story ends. A 1-star review on Google about how money-hungry and mean-spirited the company was. Now rewind that story and provide the customer their money back and in this scenario, you bought the removal of a 1-star review with a $15 refund. When faced with this decision, ask yourself, how much is your reputation worth?

Our second and most poignant item is, place customer service and product quality as the highest priority, remember the customer is always right, and truly listen when you hear there are issues.

3. Start Requesting Reviews

This is the most pro-active step you need to take in improving your online reputation. You know your average business clients leave very satisfied with the products and services they received. The problem is, they aren't leaving reviews. This is the easiest thing to overcome.

Request Reviews

Our services offer you the opportunity to encourage your customers to leave reviews, in a number of natural, friendly, and polite ways. We offer you the ability to request reviews through email campaigns to past, recent, or current clients. We also offer the ability to request reviews through SMS messaging, as well as through print media like business cards, to-go menus, etc.

Once your average customer starts providing reviews, your scores will improve and effectively bury the bad reviews. What generally happens in the process is the recent reviews become more relevant than old reviews, and the older reviews are simply overcome by quality of products and services in the recent past.

4. Respond to Your Reviews

When the bad reviews come, for crying out loud, Do NOT Ignore Them. Your first priority should be to reach out to them to resolve their issue. That review can still be turned around. People can typically edit their reviews. Even if they only increase it to a 3 and complain about the experience but that you refunded them, people see that, even in your negative reviews, you were seen as engaging and trying to provide an improved experience.

Perception is everything, when it comes to reviews. Engage with your good reviews as well. It shows that you appreciate each customer that takes the time to review your company. You definitely want to show appreciation to the ones that leave good reviews.