People typically look into their options before going with a business themselves. Prospective customers find recent reviews to help create a picture of the kind of service they can expect. Other times, they look into how a business acknowledges and addresses complaints, giving them an idea as to whether their concerns will be directed to the right people if they arise.
The Search Intelligence System (SIS) helps businesses build a consistent process for inviting and responding to customer feedback. Our system provides feedback and reviews regarding our customers' feedback process, and proposes ways to improve that process. The end result is an improved customer feedback process and a more informative and useful case study about the business for prospective customers.
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One reason why organizations struggle with review management is because they often don’t make it easy enough for customers to leave feedback. As a result, the organization may miss out on constructive feedback. Management must put processes in place that allow employees to solicit and properly manage feedback. If management is able to identify an employee that is able to address feedback and offer a response, then management can help improve star ratings. Improving the employee response to feedback is then the next best process improvement.
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We review the platforms customers use to evaluate your business. We look at recent feedback, answers to frequently asked questions, and the information you have about your business that may be confusing or misleading to customers. The focus is on the information that your average customer can see. We start with your customers' actual experience and don't look at scores or other evaluation metrics.
We think a request for review should be tied to a particular customer experience. So, we help identify the best opportunities to extend an invitation, who on the team should send it, and simplify the process as much as possible to make it easy to send. A great request for review does not attempt to manage what the customer will say, rather it builds the confidence of the customer to provide their honest comments.
We teach our clients how to appreciate feedback, with the understanding that responses will not always address all points raised. We show our clients how to acknowledge a concern without defending or rejecting it. We help place sensitive details in offline forums. With proper strategies, the client company is able to help their staff appreciate feedback, constructively, and identify when and how to protect the confidentiality of feedback.
Some comments may describe a service problem. Others may be vague or refer to situations the team is unable to understand. We establish a process to manage these types of comments. We decide who will check the situation, draft a response, and speak directly to the customer if needed. Public responses are not forums to speculate the reason for the situation or the actions the team will take to resolve it. Public responses may not identifying bearing on the situation.
Analyzing reviews allows us to understand what is important to customers, and where expectations are not met. Customers may appreciate when employees are timely with communication, or be frustrated with employees who are unclear with scheduling. We search for trends and report them to the teams that can be act on them to improve the business. These reports can inform a variety of situations and help the company create a better experience for its customers.
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Negative experiences are magnified by silence. Reputation work ties negative experiences to the communication that follows. Sometimes this means explaining booking confirmations, covering the rationale behind expected wait times, ensuring a management callback is made, or creating an opportunity to express service dissatisfaction for the customer.
We focus on the above examples because the best way to solicit feedback is to provide it. Customer Retention focuses on the relationship after the sale. This page concentrates on the feedback provided to the customer and the confidence created by that feedback.
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Our reputation management process includes the following steps:
Look at recent comments, how a person answers, the feedback that’s been provided, and the questions a person asks.
Determine who solicits and posts feedback, and who addresses the feedback.
Provide guidelines on feedback and responses, based on your business practices and policies.
Make sure feedback is forward looking, and not a promise.
Provide helpful feedback to the appropriate personnel.
Determine what works best for your situation. Provide personnel with a process to recognize customer concerns and address feedback. Simplicity often provides the best way to motivate personnel to deal with customer concerns and feedback.
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Reviews and ratings don’t always give the full picture. We analyze other factors like what kind of feedback is given, are issues raised addressed, what is the nature of the feedback (i.e. are there responses to operational issues), recency, and are the responses directed to the right people. If something changed with regard to review volume, we will look at other factors to assess the quality of the service.
There are no guarantees with review ratings. We can’t say for certain that a review will result in a given rating. Because of this, we don’t report ratings as if they are sales. However, when we provide updates, we often include pertinent information that may be of interest to the reporting and attribution team. The feedback, or comments left by customers, are often used to support or explain an observed business trend. However, these comments can be used to explain other, less obvious, trends.
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Customers may see reviews when looking for a business near them. Reviews are one of many business factors that can determine if a customer reaches out to your business. Local SEO assists in customers finding your business. Reputation management is the handling of customer feedback and is utilized after the customer has found your business.
FAQ
It involves creating and overseeing a process to manage customer feedback and reviews. This includes requesting feedback and reviews, responding to feedback and reviews, addressing feedback and review-related concerns, and altering your process based on feedback.
Since customers are free to decide whether to review and what to say, getting five-star reviews is outside of our control. We help organizations create and oversee a process to make it simple for customers to review your organization, and to train your staff to review process-related feedback and concerns.
In most cases it is appropriate to respond to the review in a factual manner and request that the customer reach out to you regarding the review. It is inappropriate to respond to a review in a manner that could be construed as attacking the customer.
It is only appropriate to request the change or removal of a review in accordance with the review platform's processes and policies.
There's no magic number. You want to ask when your customers have enough experience with your business to give a review that's not generic. You also want to establish a system for soliciting reviews. It's better to send a request to one customer a week than to send requests to 10 customers one time.
Not directly. With reputation management, the goal is to improve the average review score. Customer retention encompasses the entire relationship with the customer, including following up with and re-engaging the customer after the sale.
Negative reviews happen. You should focus on soliciting and responding to reviews to let your customers know you value your business reputation and are listening. Let us know what your process is for reviewing and responding to feedback. Also let us know where your process breaks down. We can help you create a system to address feedback.
