Before making a purchase, the majority of the customers will read a review of that particular product or business. As these reviews are being posted online, everyone can easily see them and it will affect their purchasing decision.
That’s why businesses have started creating strategies for handling these customer reviews, especially the bad ones. Knowing that today’s customers need more information about brands than they did 10 or 20 years ago, companies are seeing it as a way to engage with their customers in a more meaningful way.
So, what does a bad reviews purchasing strategy looks like and how can it enhance the relationship you have with your customers? There are several tactics that these businesses use to make the most of their customer reviews which have proven to be very beneficial.
Responding to a bad review
As much as you try to satisfy your customers, there will always be someone who thinks you’re not doing something right and publish its opinion online. At first, it might seem to you that a bad review is horrible for your business, but that’s simply not true.
Always keep in mind that having a bad review is better than not having a review at all. Moreover, responding to a bad review provides you with an opportunity to show how efficient you are in handling issues that occur.
Your answer should consist of three elements. First, show your customers that you understand how they are feeling. Second, provide them with the easiest but most effective solution. Last, keep it personalized by mentioning their names and providing yours as well.
Without these three elements, you will not be able to successfully react to a bad review and build a relationship with your existing and potential customers. If you do it right, your prospects will see how well you take care of your customers.
By providing the solution in your response, you can educate others who might face the same issue on how to solve it. As 52% of customers don’t even expect a response from the company when they leave a review, this is something businesses should definitely practice more if they want satisfied customers.
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Publishing customer testimonials
When looking for more information about the product, prospects will want to hear how others utilize it and how it helped them. By creating a customer testimonial, either through an article on your blog on a video on social media, you are showing you truly value your customers.
Not only will this let your potential customers know you care even after the purchase has been made, but also that you encourage them to share their feedback. Companies that do this have more than just a certain number of customers; they’ve built their own community.
Ask your customers to write or record their testimonial and ask for their approval to publish it. By having more material about how your customers perceive your business, your bad reviews will not be that harmful. Actually, they might become irrelevant for the majority of your customers and prospects. Gather this information from your customers and use it to achieve your sales and marketing objectives.
Your own case study
Talking openly about something always decreases its power. For instance, if you try to hide you had a bad product feature by not talking about it, it will irritate your customers and they will need to address it.
But, if you start talking about it through your content, whether it’s on your website or social media, or events you attend, you will see it’s perceived differently. Every business makes mistakes. Talking about how you’ve learned from your mistakes makes you brave, and your customers will appreciate it.
How about creating a small case study on how a bad review made you improve your products or services? You can highlight how important your customers are to your business. It can be published just as an article on your blog or as a guest article on someone else’s platform, but it would be beneficial to talk about it.
A company which will publish a case study can even include their customers in it and show them gratitude that way as well. In other words, you can’t talk about how relationships with customers are important to you if you’re not interacting with them at all.
Conclusion
Instead of trying to ignore bad reviews and hope they don’t harm your business, why not make the most of them? Accepting that a bad review can happen to everyone, you will have more motivation to handle it the right way.
You can even find another way of using your bad reviews to increase your sales results which has never been implemented before. Everything your customers do deserves your attention if you want to run a successful business. Why not start with bad customer reviews?