Why you should embrace feedback to keep and grow your customers

MX Bites / May 30, 2022

We live in an age that consists of impersonal transactions as we navigate the digital world, consumers are absolutely spoilt for choice and are no longer limited to only food delivery services. Since businesses have diversified the scope within which they operate consumers now have more options without having to ever talk to another human. 

As a result of this, when customers want to know more about the company, products, and services they often turn to advice from other customers in the form of reviews. In present times it would not be considered hyperbolic to say that stars make or break your business when we reside in a culture consisting of rating and review practices. 

Negative reviews stand out like a sore thumb! 

But that does not necessarily mean that it’s bad for your business, the thing is they occur even if you do everything in your power to avoid them. Businesses should be proactively leveraging bad reviews, and while it is clear that reviews both good and bad significantly impact buyers’ decisions the latter provides insights into business-related problems, thus acting as a warning signal if you’re paying close enough attention to what is being said about your business and services provided.

Retrospectively looking at negative reviews, they generally provide a diagnostic overview of the inferior performance of a business, however, the potential resides in uncovering competitive opportunities that could potentially downstream the consequences.

So, let’s talk about how you should be responding

How you intend on responding to the criticism received can be good for businesses, particularly if you are working towards increasing your ranking in search engine optimization (SEO). 

Bad reviews should not be taken personally but instead as a learning tool, consumers who leave a bad review expect to have their experience acknowledged;

• • The response should be on-brand with a company tone, remaining empathetic
  • The response should be within a timely manner – letting it hang too long could result in potential customer loss
  • Respond with a pre-approved and customized response 
  • Address the review, and issue directly
  • Engage in an open dialogue with the reviewer
  • Your intention should be to convert the bad review to good if at all possible
  • Publicize the resolution of the issue from the bad review

It simply does not matter if you are a large corporation or a small business – the long-lasting effects of nurturing the experience your customers have with you will fortify a bond for years to come. Consumers will compare your business’ support and customer experience to the biggest and best competitors – they don’t care if you are the best in the industry, they care about how it is they are treated, and how effectively their issues are dealt with.