How to Respond to Positive and Negative Reviews to Make Customers Fall in Love With Your Brand
One negative online review can do a lot of damage to your brand, but a positive one, on the other hand, can increase loyalty and attract new customers. It’s equally important to make a great product and build a loyal community around your brand. Here’s how to make customers “fall in love” with your brand through good reviews.
A Common Tip: Don’t Ignore Reviews
This tip applies to any review – positive, negative, neutral or even textless. If a customer has engaged in a communication, it definitely needs to continue. Even if you received a negative review, you should quietly admit to yourself that your company is not perfect – you, your team, and partners make mistakes, and this is okay. The main thing is to take the negative feedback in the right way: think about how to solve the client’s problem and use their feedback to grow the business. For example, thanks to negative feedback on a 22Bets website design, its developers can improve its interface and make betting easier.
From a negative commenter you can grow a neutral one, and from him a positive one, or even an admiring one.
How to Deal With Negative Feedback
Respond Without Emotion, With Restraint and Politely
We understand how difficult it’s to resist when a negative feedback comes to your company card in the geoservice or in the comments in the social networks, you want to get angry and immediately engage in a skirmish. But in the end, this can only make things worse, and you will lose a client (and possibly others who will see this “dialogue”).
Introduce Yourself and Address the Author of the Review by Name, if It’s Listed in the Profile
It’s best to avoid phrases like “dear customer,” “dear guest”. Show the client that you are addressing him personally and solving his problem specifically.
When responding to negative feedback, demonstrate that a real employee is responding: include your name and title in your signature, and leave contacts for your feedback.
Thank the Customer for the Feedback, Even the Negative One
You need to show the customer that his opinion, even negative, is important to the company. For example, “Thank you for your feedback! Your opinion is valuable to us, and we’ll do our best to correct our mistakes.”
Apologize
The best way to respond correctly to negative feedback and accommodate a disgruntled customer is to admit error and apologize. Even if it wasn’t your fault or the mistake was insignificant.
Often, after an apology from an official representative of the brand, the client is more inclined to meet you halfway. Show that the error is a point of growth for you, and it’s great that the user is helping the company grow.
Invite the Customer Into a Dialogue
Ask the customer for a phone call, email, or even a face-to-face meeting to resolve the issue. This will help resolve the conflict more quickly.
For example: “Please leave your phone so we can contact you and correct the situation.”
Use a Second Chance
In response to negative feedback, tell the customer that you are willing to correct your mistakes and improve your service or product. Show that your company would be happy for the customer to contact you again and give you a second chance.
If your company has really made a big mistake, try to smooth over the rough edges and offer a bonus – a discount, discount card, loyalty card or free additional service (shipping, promo code). By offering a bonus, you motivate the customer to contact you again and correct the impression of your company.
Keep Your Promises
It’s not enough to just respond to customer feedback, you need to use feedback to improve your product or service. In your response to customer feedback, describe what you’ve already done or plan to do to correct the situation. It’s important for people to understand how the problem was solved: for example, you replaced the terminal, you talked to a sassy waiter, you refunded money for a poor-quality product.
How to Deal With Positive Feedback
Thank the Customer and Tell Them Why
So that the response to a positive review does not look too dry, it is better to personalize it: for example, “thank you for noticing the work of our waiters,” “thank you for choosing our store!”, “we are glad that you noted the work of our salon, we look forward to seeing you again.”
Use Keywords in Response to Positive Feedback
Use the company name and other keywords in response to positive reviews. This will help them come out on top in search results. By mentioning your company name in the response to a positive review, the search engine is highly likely to show that review to the user who entered your company name in the query.
Motivate the Customer to Contact the Company Again
At the end of the response, add a call to action – invite them to come back to the company again or to try other products or services. After all, responding to a positive review is not a formality, but a real opportunity to offer the person additional products or services of the company.
Speak the Client’s Language
If the person wrote a detailed and enthusiastic review, he obviously expects not a short “Thank you!”, but the same detailed response. In some cases, even slang is appropriate, if your target audience matches that Tone of Voice.
Talk about new products or upcoming promotions to make the customer want to come back to you.