One of the biggest mistakes a business owner can do is ignore reviews. While it can be very tempting to just stick your finger in your ears and tune out everything that is said about you or your business, all you are doing is stifling your potential for growth. In order to run a successful business, you need to have a combination of thick skin and humility. Without both, you run the risk of allowing your business to close down. The following are reasons that you should pay attention to reviews and even engage your customers.
Reviews Give You Opportunities to Improve
When you read a review that is not so positive, you can actually look at where you can improve on your products. Even some of the harshest reviews have some valuable input that can give you ideas on what you can do moving forward. If you just ignore reviews and continue running your business how you see fit, you could eventually push customers away. Even a really harsh review can attract customers to your product in that they will want to know what the fuss is all about. Then they will see for themselves the quality of your products or services.
Opportunities For Customer Interaction
When looking at reviews, it may help your business if you do more than just read reviews. You can also take the time to respond to some of the reviews. One good way you can interact with customers is by thanking them for their reviews. You can also thank them for certain parts of the review that point out what can be improved. Of course, you can take the time to work these improvements into the next product or services. This is an example of a positive interaction with customers.
Reviews Increase Website Engagement
If you've set up your website to receive, implement, and display customer reviews, then you're already ahead of the curve when it comes to website engagement. Think of it this way: regardless of whether the review is positive or negative, someone took their time to look you up, visit your website, look through it for the place to leave a review, and offer input. Designing your site to be reviewer-friendly is an excellent way to ensure that interested or passionate customers engage more with you and your brand. If you're smart about it, you can turn any review into a new business opportunity.
Helps you Grow in How You Handle Feedback
While reading a harsh review can be tough and reading tons of harsh reviews can be really devastating, one of the best things you can do is learn how to handle feedback in a mature way. If you rage at customers who submit harsh reviews, then all you are going to do is lose customers. One thing you can do is take a break from everything and get practice reading some of the worst reviews so that you can get used to the sting. Then you can take the most useful aspects of the review and find ways to improve on your products and companies as a whole.
Reviews Can Influence Credibility
One thing a business needs is credibility. Reviews can either help or harm your credibility. As a matter of fact, the credibility of a business depends heavily on Google reviews. Therefore, you have to make sure that you are showing yourself to be credible. If customers do not believe that you are credible, then they are less likely to have anything to do with you. Reviews, and they way that you respond to your customers are going to be important for your social brand.
Reviews Can Help With SEO
Good or bad reviews can put you on the map. One of the biggest things to do as a business is to get exposure. Even bad publicity can work to an extent. For one thing, a review can help with SEO. Local and global SEO can work well for your business. If you are mentioned on a review site for a keyword, you are going to be visible. However, it is not enough to just be visible. It is better to be visible for the right reasons. Therefore, always look for opportunities for growth and improvement so that you can continue to gain customers.
Reviews are pieces of content you do not want to ignore as a business owner. That said, you do not have to read every review. Among the reviews that you should gloss over are one line reviews. They offer nothing useful to the customer. The reviews you should read share their opinions of the brand or the product and go in depth as to why they have that opinion. They offer a lot of useful information to the customer and the brand as well. The most successful businesses are those that pay attention to what the customers are saying.