Controlling your company’s online reputation is a matter of strategy for increasing your trust capital and point-of-sale traffic. If you didn’t know, 80% of the French and other countries trust customer reviews. This figure is significantly higher than that of digital or traditional advertising.
In 2020, 87% of the French population said they consulted customer reviews before making a purchase decision. And 34% of consumers say that customer reviews are more convincing than advertisements and promotions when it comes to the decision phase. In principle, reviews are a reflection of your customer experience. You should remember that it is essential to have a strategy in place to collect and respond to reviews. It is a proof of recognition and therefore a solution to increase your trust capital.
Customer reviews have an impact on Google rankings, and are the second element after Google My Business listings that help improve local SEO, i.e. the visibility of your business on specific searches.
Importance of responding to customer reviews on Google
Controlling your company’s online reputation inevitably involves handling customer reviews. And we know how time-consuming it can be to deal with these comments when you own several businesses. The priority is to respond to all customer feedback, whether negative or positive. This is seen as a sign of appreciation and a way to build trust in your business. Responding to positive reviews builds customer loyalty, but it is even more important to respond to negative customer feedback, as this is the time to make them change their mind about you. At the same time, you show them that you care about their feedback and that you value them. Responding to negative feedback increases the conversion rate.
How to collect customer reviews?
Now that you are convinced of the importance of customer reviews for your business, you need to find a way to get your customers to leave reviews and especially to get them to leave reviews for each of your local businesses. There are a number of ways to encourage a customer to leave a review on your Google My Business profile. You can do this by :
- Suggest to your customers in the shop to give their opinion via a QR code or a link,
- Automate the sending of an email or a personalised message by company following a purchase or the consumption of a service,
- Include a link to your various GMB sheets in all your e-mail communications,
- Publish reviews on your various social networks to gather more reviews and value your customers’ opinions.
Collecting reviews will allow you to highlight the customer experience and the quality of your team’s work while gaining insights into areas for improvement. We strongly advise against buy Google reviews, as thiscan damage your e-reputation and you will lose your trust capital.
What is the point of choosing a solution?
If you run multiple outlets, a specialised platform like digitaleo will help you take better control of your online reputation while allowing you to track customer satisfaction performance indicators, have a centralised view of reviews from all your businesses and respond instead of your local teams. It will also help you prepare response templates for your customers. In this way, you control your image and make your different teams independent.
Every brand should monitor its online reputation. Bad reviews and comments can negatively influence sales. A study of a handful of consumers revealed that when they look at negative reviews of an unknown company, they are no longer motivated to buy or seek its services. In most cases, negative reviews cause them to delay their purchase. They either take an extra time to think about it or go to the shop to physically check it out.
When it comes to online shopping, unfavourable customer reviews on forums, websites or blogs deter 85% of people from making a purchase via this channel. As a business owner, you should always bear in mind that consumers are always more likely to share their bad reviews. Make sure that all reviews on your site are verified to avoid being penalized by Google.
The team of the online reputation agency is composed of experts in the sector who work for the implementation of an adapted communication strategy. The efforts made are also aimed at managing the online reputation of companies. Most institutions do not have the time to deal with all these aspects effectively.
