With a variety of online platforms such as TripAdvisor, TrustPilot, Feefo and Trusted Shops at our fingertips, we now live in a culture where we are instantly able to read a comprehensive list of customer reviews about near enough any product or service.
This user feedback helps many of us to decide which products to buy, which hotels to book and which restaurants to eat in, and this is often without ever feeling the need to read a single ‘expert’ opinion or review.
But for some businesses this rising phenomenon can have just as many negative effects as positive, as a crushingly bad review can damage a brand, something that is beginning to worry many businesses.
We have conducted a survey of 100 clients asking them a simple question: 'If the first page of reviews were all positive bar one, would you read the negative review first and if so would it put you off the company?'
The results were very interesting! 78% said they would read the negative one first and just over 50% said if it was negative enough it would put them off a purchase.
There was however a silver lining. We contacted a few of those surveyed and they stated that if the company responded in a dynamic way to the review then it would most likely offset the negativity considerably. We also learnt that if the review was negative, but not that negative, then it added authenticity to the product as long as the overwhelming feeling from other reviews was positive.
So, it's more important than ever to motivate your happy clients to post reviews, while at the same time making sure that channels of communication are opened with unhappy clients before they go public, but wouldn't it be nice to have an automated solution? Yep you guessed it we have one, and it's called Positivity!
Positivity is a simple system allowing you to verify whether a client is happy or not, before you suggest that they submit a review via a public website like Trust Pilot, Review Centre, Trip Advisor etc. It’s totally unique to Click Submit and is included as part of our quarterly service.
So, how does it work? During set up you will be able to create up to 5 questions, on which your clients will give you a score of between 1 and 5, via our white labelled client feedback site: www.feedingback.co.uk. You will then be able to set a positive threshold. This threshold will dictate the message that they see after they submit their feedback. So for example, you may set a threshold of 4 stars of above. This would mean that if the result averages 4 stars or above your client would be asked to submit a public review. If the result averages 3 stars or below your client would be presented with a message that you create during set up. This could be a message to ask them to contact you with their details to discuss their dissatisfaction and try to achieve a more positive outcome.
We have set up a Positivity profile for Click Submit, to show you how it looks to the end client. We would send the following link to all of our clients: feedingback.co.uk/www.clicksubmit.co.uk.
To conclude, online reviews are an increasingly crucial part of your overall online marketing strategy. It's key to get positive momentum as soon as possible, but what surprised us about the survey was the impact that a small amount of negativity can have on your business. Now is the time to take control of your online reputation!
We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions then please don't hesitate to get in touch.
