Why Reputation Management is So Important
Digital Word of Mouth
Reputation is becoming one of the most important conversion factors for local businesses. We are entering the clickless search age and Google is returning faster and quicker results taking users to less and less websites. Many of these fast clickless answers are based around social proof. Social proof equals evidence created by others that paints an objective picture of the trustworthiness of an entity. It is worth more than advertising and is today’s digital word of mouth. As humans we operate with mental pictures. It is critical you do everything within reason to paint the picture in your user’s mind what it will be like to buy from you. The more ambiguity you remove the better your chances of gaining a customer.
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, and More...
Google and other third party sites provide the venue for other users to talk and communicate about their experience with businesses. Sites like Google have credibility because of how their review system works. Only one user per Google account can leave a review, and several measures are in place to ensure it is legitimate. But there are several types of reviews, each with their own implications.
With an open system of user input you are relying on the whims of other human beings. As scary as that sounds, most people have intent to leave honest reviews, and most people are empathetic to the impact of negative reviews. With that said, these crazy sapiens also can get drunk, forgetful, get the wrong business, or maybe you fired their friend so they retaliate. Point is all of these hurt your image and reputation, and oftentimes a little bit of ego.
Most users are surprised how much Google will ‘allow’ to remain on reviews, especially since Google wants to display as accurate of a picture as possible to users. This can include fake, inaccurate, malicious or mistaken reviews. When it is obvious to us the review should be removed, that is usually when it seems like Google won’t remove it.
Anything that is damaging to our reputation we naturally defend against, so we turn to Google and complain. While some scenarios indeed exist that will qualify the removal of a review, it is best to have a practice and review process in place assuming that all reviews, no matter how incorrect, will never go away. Like the profit model of a casino is the result of a long-term process, so is your reputation management. It isn't about any one review good or bad, anymore than it is about a single bet in a casino. It is about the long game. All businesses need to develop and follow a consistent process that deals with modeling your reputation in the most efficient and successful way possible.
Nutshell Pointers on Handling Reviews
Three rules:
- Always try and request removal of reviews that feel harmful.
- Always respond to every review, no matter what type below it may be.
- Craft your responses carefully. Sometimes your response can be more damaging or rewarding than the initial review.
- Good - Yeah, keep it and convey gratitude to the reviewer.
- Bad - If you can’t get rid of, address to the audience watching you respond. No one cares about the one complaining, they are looking at reviews to learn about you, not the reviewer. Educate those users you are compassionate, you listen, and you are willing to correct any issue.
- Ugly - Sometimes reviews are highly misspelled, or incoherent, or left by someone who writes with crayons. Never attack a customer of course, and always respond, but sometimes letting it be ugly reduces the impact of reading users. They can detect this issue likely resides with the person leaving the review and those ugly words probably don’t accurately represent your business.
- Fake - Like ugly ones these are sometimes detectable just by reading them.
- Malicious - Oftentimes from ex-employees, competitive companies, blackhat tactics or just plain mean people.These typically hurt the ego the most, more than it actually hurts your online reputation. Craft a response showing your customer service in action, and kill them with kindness.
- Inaccurate - Address with polite correction.
- Inappropriate - Always see about removal.
What to Watch Out For
Not all bad reviews are of course from bad sources or intent. Sometimes they are legitimate warning signals to failures within a company. As we learned earlier it is all about the overall picture, the portrait of your business that gets painted as a whole by all sources. If you have the vast majority of your users say you are 5 stars, and a few say you are 1 start with reasons that don’t repeat, these reviews typically lose significance with users because it doesn’t contribute to a larger picture. It is an isolated bit of negative information buried by a sea of matching positive information.
When negative reviews, of any type, stack up that begin to paint a picture of failure that is when serious corrective action needs to be taken, and quickly. We have a client who services over 9000 customers. Sometimes mean reviews come in that talk about how they were treated and that this company clearly doesn’t know how to care for customers. Problem is many thousands of other customers disagree, and leave great reviews to the contrary and continue repeat business. These negative reviews stood no chance to change positive momentum created by others.
Conversely, we also have a client that initially had a string of reviews that all talked about a specific failure. When that specific and consistent failure is articulated by several different users from different perspectives a picture begins to form. This picture is what is damaging, and what also will need real correction, starting with addressing the real life failure in the business. Point is that reviews should also create a picture of what others see that is important to see. Don’t ignore the images that are being painted.
Research the Google Review Stars
Trusting Google and seeing many stars with a high average does something else for us. It is something that might not sound significant or important but as we’ll see it can be what makes or breaks businesses. What ratings do is save users research time. This boring sounding result has a profound effect. Think for a moment the trust and faith that builds in the glance of a few seconds looking at images of stars. This quick gesture has now replaced hours, sometimes days or even weeks of research.
Let’s examine.
Take an example of wanting to buy furniture. The main thing you are trying to do is feel comfortable about where to buy, what to buy and how much. Your natural question of, “Where should I buy my furniture?” now needs an answer. Think about how you would have gone about answering that question 20 years ago. The exercise is to first earn trust in a business, then of those trusted businesses you make your purchase decision. So you go to the furniture store, you walk in, engage with the salesperson, learn about the product, research the product, come back, shop around repeating the same steps. Then you pray, talk to friends, check your gut, make a sandwich, have a drink, then make a decision. Now we can just casually go to places like Amazon waiting in line for coffee and check the stars. Done.
All the time and calories wrapped up in that process are now replaced by a few seconds of looking at stars and numbers courtesy of Google. Now users don’t question the details, the feedback from strangers is all they need. If one business has many stars more than their next competitor, users sometimes don’t even shop the other options. Why would they? All these other users who left so many positive reviews just did it for them. And this occurred in a few seconds, not weeks, days, or even minutes in some cases.
Good star ratings equal untold amounts of research and tells the users very clearly whether they should buy from you or not. After all, the goal is to feel good about the decision. Rating systems are doing that best. Typically this is the job of a salesperson. But since online ratings are tied to more conversions than ever, a good online reputation can be your most profitable sales agent ever. And the more good feedback you get the better your salesforce. But that does assume ‘good’ feedback.
Summary - Reputation Management
Why is reputation management so important? Because it will make you more money! Simple as that. There is a direct jugular vein connection between your reputation and your bottom line. Take care of that connection and what your bottom line swell.
Hopefully this article has been helpful in convincing you that your online reputation matters more today than it did yesterday and there is no reason to see why this trend would alter course. We highly encourage every business to establish a process internally that complies with Google’s Terms of Service. This task however takes time. There is time in reviewing, monitoring, responding and harvesting. If you would like to focus your time on your core business and let someone else handle this ongoing chore consider giving us a call or contact us using our Contact Form. We are a close team that does all our own work with affordable rates. As a business, we fully appreciate and understand how precious your reputation can be.