Managing Your Reputation in Top Online Review Sites
Many popular local business listings provide customers to leave reviews about their experiences with your business. Reviews can often affect not only your online reputation, but also affect a potential new customer’s likelihood of choosing to do business with you.
Generally , the very best way to make sure your online reputation is positive is to actively solicit reviews from all clients . If your business is good , then the number of good testimonials will greatly outnumber the negative . However, if you’re in business long enough you will get a bad review every now and then . Human nature says as much.
Although not all review sites provide a business owner the opportunity to respond to reviews, some do. The choice of whether to respond directly to a review is strictly up to the owner. We urge caution, however, in how a business owner does this since the response can easily make the situation worse. In addition, direct responses are public to all and can have an affect on your overall online reputation.
Google’s published tips for writing a response are right on the mark :
- Ignore minor complaints and resolve issues privately when possible.
- Address problems constructively. Don’t use responses to advertise.
- Do not ask reviewers for anything or offer them anything.
- Be professional and polite. The world can read your response.
In addition , we would add the following:
- Do not attack the validity of a customer’s complaint because it will often be read as a personal attack.
Reviews You Can Respond To
Google Places
To respond publicly to a review on Google Places , log into your account and browse to your Google Places listing. Below each review in the “Reviews by Google users” section is a link to “Respond publicly as the owner”.
Yahoo Local
To respond publicly to a review on Yahoo Local, log into your account and browse to your Yahoo listing. Below each review in the “Recent Reviews” section is a link to “Comment on Review”. This varies slightly from Google in that ANYONE can comment on a review – not just the business owner. However, the response will display the user behind it.
Bing Local
As of this writing, Bing Local no longer shows full reviews . They use a basic 5-star user system of ratings . There is no mechanism for responding to reviews on Bing.
Merchantcircle
Merchantcircle provides perhaps the most control over customer testimonials . As the business owner, you can delete reviews or respond publicly to them . To manage reviews on Merchantcircle, log in to your account and go to the “Dashboard”. From the dashboard, click on “Reviews”.
Insiderpages
Insiderpages is similar to Google and Yahoo in terms of providing the ability for a business owner to respond directly – and publicly – to a review . Log into the Insiderpages account and browse to your listing. Below each review is a link to “Respond to this review”.
Yelp
Yelp is similar to Google and Yahoo in terms of providing the opportunity for a business owner to respond directly – and publicly – to a review. Log into your business owner account and browse to your listing. Below each testimonial is a link to “Add owner comment”.
Superpages
Superpages is similar to Google and Yahoo in terms of providing the ability for a business owner to respond directly – and publicly – to a testimonial . Log into your business owner account and browse to your listing. Below each review is a link to “Business Owner Reply to Review”.
Yellowpages.com
To respond publicly to a review on Yellowpages, log into your account and browse to your Yellowpages listing. Below each testimonial in the “Recent Reviews for…” section is a link to “Respond to this Review”. This varies a bit from Google in that ANYONE can comment on a testimonial – not just the business owner. However, the comment will show the user behind it.
Kudzu
To respond publicly to a review on Kudzu, log into your business account and go to “My Business Center”. Under “Manage your business profile” is a link to “Manage Your Reviews”. Kudzu gives the option to “Add Reply” to any review, regardless of the source (I.e.- third party reviews from another listing that is shown in Kudzu).
And Finally...
We all strive to make every client happy every time – or else we wouldn’t invest so much time, energy, money and emotion into running our business . However, it is simply impossible to make every client happy every time. Customers have bad days and sometimes customers can have unrealistic expectations.
The idea that we can fully control every aspect to totally eliminate bad reviews is simply unrealistic. By actively encouraging every customer to share their experience online, the number of good reviews will far outweigh the impact of a few bad reviews.
We would urge extreme caution to anyone who wants to respond directly to negative comments . Be sure to reduce or even eliminate emotional responses. They are more often than not counter-productive. And since responses are public – and mostly permanent – choose your words wisely.
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