Many people use online reviews when purchasing a business or product. These customer reviews can impact a potential customer’s purchasing decisions from a company like yours. Where you have an online business, your customers cannot see the product in person or chat with you as the business owner or a shop worker to better understand your business. This article will help outline some points you need to know about online reviews as an online business owner.
Do Not Post Fake Reviews
While a positive review can be helpful for your business, posting fake positive reviews for your business will likely not positively affect its reputation. For example, Auckland-based computer repair company CER Computers used the computers handed into them for repair to post fake positive reviews of their services. Unfortunately, this did more damage to their reputation than any legitimately negative reviews could have done.
Also, do not pay people to post reviews, as this can get into the grey area of misrepresentation and may have serious legal consequences for your business.
Understand and Listen to Your Customers
If a customer posts a review of your business, they provide feedback you can use to improve your business. Take on board what they are saying. If they like something, expand on it, or ensure you implement it into your systems. If they have experienced difficulties, take this on board and see what you can improve.
Acknowledging reviews head-on and apologising for any issues that may have occurred is essential to show that your business is:
- mature;
- flexible; and
- has good customer service.
This will leave an overall better impression in customers’ minds than ignoring or attacking people who leave poor reviews.
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Consider How You Want to Obtain Reviews
While customers often leave reviews on social media and Google forums, these are not online reviews. You may also source customer reviews to better understand your business’s positives and negatives.
If you want customer feedback, you could ask customers to send in reviews of your business when they receive a delivery email confirmation or at the end of the sale process. This allows you to receive customer feedback by asking specific questions and can be kept private.
Be Across the Board
You could set up a Google Alert for reviews about your business. Or a staff member could check for new reviews every few days across several websites.
You could also monitor non-traditional review forums to ensure you receive feedback. Websites like consumer.org are a source for many business reviews.
Know the Limits of What is Appropriate
You generally should steer clear of deleting online reviews, as you may be illegally misrepresenting your business. However, there are certain situations where it is appropriate to delete online reviews, such as if the review is:
- harmful;
- abusive; or
- offensive.
For example, if a review contains racist language, you do not need to keep it up. If you cannot personally delete the review, you can apply to the site the review is posted on to have it deleted.
Additionally, if a review is defamatory, then you can remove it. This is where it has false information that is intentionally meant to damage the reputation of your business. In that case, you may wish to contact a lawyer to see if you can take legal action against the malicious reviewer.
Key Takeaways
Online reviews are an inevitable part of running a business in today’s society. This is even more important for online companies like yours, as customers are less able to get an impression from a company or product as they cannot see them physically before purchasing. Ensure that you have sound systems in place to manage and deal with online reviews and understand the role of online reviews for your business.
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Frequently Asked Question
If there are any offensive, harmful, or abusive reviews, or if they are defamatory, then these reviews do not need to be left online. You may wish to contact a lawyer to see if legal action needs to be taken against people leaving these reviews.
Am I able to post a review of my own business?
It is generally not a good look to leave reviews of your own business online. This may get into the area of misrepresentation, or at the very least, it promotes a poor image of your business.
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