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Do retailers need help managing their online reviews?

Written by Tom Ryan

A host of companies have arrived over the last couple of years offering online review management for businesses looking to increase positive reviews and decrease negative ones.

At $49 a month for a single location, ReviewTrackers, one of the companies in the space, offers:

  • Tracking of all major review websites;
  • E-mail notifications for new reviews;
  • Daily scanning for new reviews;
  • The ability to request reviews from customers;
  • Customer feedback landing pages;
  • A reporting and analytics suite to search and sort reviews.

Most of the services don't interact with customers or review websites but provide a dashboard to help businesses react and respond more quickly. Some also help retailers set up and manage review sections on their own websites.

ReviewTrackers said it helps small businesses learn from online feedback while managing bad reviews and encouraging favorable reviews to increase ratings. On yelp.com, an increase in one star can lead to a five to nine percent overall revenue increase, according to a Harvard Business School study.

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Source: ReviewInc

As far as the dreaded negative review is concerned, Crystal Shuller, director of customer happiness for ReviewTrackers, writes on her company's blog that businesses can flag false or fake reviews, but removing them is a rare occurrence.

The best response, she writes, is a "kind, caring, and resolution-oriented response" that may encourage the customer who wrote the negative review to give you another chance. Managing and growing an online reputation involves securing a high volume of positive reviews. Ms. Shuller writes, "Review velocity will result in drowning the negative reviews by positioning the bulk of your positive reviews in more prominent locations, when sorted chronologically or by popularity."

Consumers are increasingly using and trusting online customer reviews. A survey early this year from BrightLocal found that 68 percent of U.S. internet users trust businesses more because of positive online reviews. Five years ago, 45 percent of respondents said they either didn't pay attention to online reviews at all, or didn't let reviews influence them.

A study from ReviewInc, another online review management firm, found that online reviews (such as on Yelp, Google+ and other review sites) were identified by a survey of 1,000 consumers as the most trusted advertising medium by far. A complementary survey of 1,020 U.S. business owners found that only 11.1 percent of business owners identified online reviews as the most effective advertising medium.

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