Drive More Interest in Your Products with Well-Written Reviews
How reviews can entice customers to spend their hard-earned money on your products and services
You’re browsing the Net for restaurants to dine in with your date. As you look at the websites of several well-known dining establishments, you’re more confused than ever which to choose. All of them have a tasty-sounding menu with pictures that convey intimate ambience at prices you can afford. Upon further investigation, you see some good reviews of a certain restaurant that’s out of the way of your usual city haunts. This bistro has been praised by the reviewer for an overall positive experience. Which restaurant are you more likely to choose?
When asked the same question, many people answered that they would pick the establishment that has been reviewed. Their collective reason? “If there are customers willing to back up a business’ claims of good quality, then I’m more willing to go to that business myself,” one succinctly says. This makes it important for businesses to have positive reviews about the following aspects: (1) quality of products and/or services, (2) professionalism and customer service, (3) working environment, and (4) price of commodities. It would certainly be nice for a business to meet all four standards to impress existing customers and attract new ones.
But not all reviews made can be trusted nowadays. Some reviews can be considered spam or made by reviewers who just want to blackball the reputation of a certain company. They do this to chase away potential customers and make them go to the competitors instead. How can entrepreneurs fight against such menace to their living? Review sites and search engines like Yelp and Google do their best to filter such content, although there are still some flaws to their screening program. Many legitimate and positive reviews are sometimes flagged and taken off the business page.
What entrepreneurs can do to salvage their online reputation in the face of scathing and inflaming one-star comments is to make a public reply. The answer has to be as courteous and calm as possible. Even though you know that the review’s a spam or a real yet somehow unfair complaint, you still have to be polite because other users can still view the conversation. If they read that you’re engaging in a verbal brawl with your irate ‘customer’, they’re bound to think the worst of you.
Turn this negative review to your advantage instead. One way to do this is to reply like this, “I’m sorry for the reprehensible service you’ve received. Can you please contact me at this number to clarify the matter?” An answer like this will make the other users look favorably on you. They will see you as a conscientious merchant striving to make things right. Review websites like Yelp allow entrepreneurs to respond to customer reviews.
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