THE BEST WAY TO REPLY TO CUSTOMER REVIEWS

Reviews about your product can come in three forms; positive, neutral, or negative. It is not a very common practice for sellers to reply to buyers when they leave a review, especially online. Sellers often fear that customers may get irrational and resort to using foul language. But to do any form of business, you cannot completely avoid interactions with customers. And this is still the case even after they have made a purchase. 

Sellers, who ensure they keep the communication lines clear, even after making a sale, tend to retain more customers than those who don’t. For positive and neutral reviews, it might not look like much, but for negative ones it is important. Depending on the kind of business you do, a customer may want to take expressing their frustrations further to the point of reaching authorities. If you did your part well, this might not immediately be a concern, but if authorities keep getting repeated complaints like that, it puts your business in exactly the kind of light you don’t want. 

Knowing how to reply to customer reviews becomes an essential skill to ensure the smooth running and the eventual growth and survival of your business. Customer retention and business expansion are two critical factors in having long-term business success. A business that doesn’t grow will inevitably diminish. 

Below are a few things to do when replying to customer reviews to ensure you get the best from them.

• Respond appropriately

An inappropriate response is worse than no response at all. It turns a good situation bad and makes an already bad situation worse. The way you respond to neutral reviews is not the same way you respond to negative ones. 

A positive review comes from a satisfied customer. You want to cement that and seal their loyalty forever. A good word or two will do more than just “reply a review”, it will make your customer feel appreciated. A simple “thank you for your honest feedback” can do this. 

Neutral reviews come from indifferent customers. You don’t have the loyalty of these. If you can offer an appropriate reply, you can turn this situation around. People feel more emotionally connected to you when they know they’re being listened to.

For negative reviews, it is a matter of necessity. However, you must make sure you don’t get caught in a war of words with the customer. Let your main goal here be empathy and solving the problem 

• Don’t be too hasty to say something

If you can’t wait to reply, just say “thank you for your feedback” and wait. Hasty replies, asides from sounding generic, often need to be corrected later. And that proves that you are not a consistent individual or business. 

While you should attempt to reply to the customers quickly so they would rest assured you’re trying to solve the problem, don’t do so hastily and say things you have to correct later. 

Also if you’re not an empathetic person, haste will make you say things that may ruin your brand reputation. 

• Attempt to reach the customer directly

In most transactions, it is often the customer that tries to reach the seller. You can reverse this and have dedicated and trained feedback handlers.

If the problem is complicated, engaging the customer on the review page might not be the best way to go. You can request their contact so that you can respond to them via a direct message, phone call, email, or even a visit if necessary. 

• Understand the peculiarity of your business

You cannot afford not to use feedback when rendering services like medical services. 

For example, online betterhelp reviews provides counseling and therapy online. Customers can leave reviews online about the service they get from BetterHelp. In this case, you need to take reviews seriously because someone who is taking a post-traumatic stress disorder test is not the same as someone buying a pizza. Even though they are both transacting, the stakes are not the same. 

As such, the online reviews from portals like BetterHelp become more than just business tools. In this case, they are medical tools with health implications. 

• Avoid generic solutions or replies

Products are not always the same, neither are customers. Combine the products and the customers, and you have even more permutations.

Listen or read, to understand the actual problem. That way, you would be saving both your time and that of the customer, ensuring that the transaction gives you both the best value possible in the end.

For the medical services, this is particularly important. Several people go through things like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other ailments without even knowing. And these are often caused by their personal experiences which are always different. You can’t just take one reply and throw it at them all. You begin to solve the problem by replying specifically to them.

Customer reviews are more than just text thrown on a page. They are tools that online businesses can use. And knowing how to reply to them is a skill that makes their use even better.