Small Businesses are highly sensitive to the work that is carried out on the day to day basis. A bad day in the life of a small business can negatively affect its overall business. At the same time, people are now actively posting and sharing their experiences about a company on social media.

Platforms such as Yelp and TripAdvisor are allowing the average person to share their experiences about the professional experiences with a business. This also means that every good and bad review on the internet can affect the potential sales of the company.

Online reviews affect business propagation to a great extent, as almost 86% of the customers read the online reviews of the product or the service before availing them. At the same time, it was found that almost 80% of people aged between 19 to 34 have given online reviews for a business.

This means that customer reviews stay on the internet for a long time and affect business sales to a greater extent.

Active Responses work Constructively

A manager can make sure that all the customer reviews are well managed and answered. Negative reviews will be posted as frequently as positive ones, and industry experts say that it is important to answer them both to generate positive engagement with the consumers and a strong presence in the market. It is also said that replying to consumer reviews generates high ratings in the market.

As per a study generated by HBR that observed tens of thousands of hotel reviews and responses from TripAdvisor, hotels that responded to the negative reviews constructively generated a 12 per cent increase in their sales and revenue.

Consumers who notice that managers have posted responses against the negative reviews and have resolved conflicts, will avoid posting negative reviews.

Is it Good to Respond to Each review..?

The University of Denver revealed some of the facts related to the reviews and replies posted online.

• If a hotel showed very few negative reviews and there were responses to those reviews, it dropped the business performance.
• Responses to the online comments hurt the financial performance when there are a lot of positive reviews about its products and services. The study says that replies to all the comments can lead to unnecessary information overload.
• If there are a few positive reviews, responding to them helps to increase the overall revenue.
• Responding to the comments when there are a lot of negative reviews can improve the overall financial performance of the company.

Tips for responding to the negative Online reviews

Ryan Erskine, manager of client services at BrandYourself, in an article on Forbes, says that business owners should keep the communication simple. They must stay calm during the client interaction. If a reviewer is complaining about a situation, you can make apologies for their bad experience.

It is also important that the responses are always simple and direct. It is also important that the response briefly speaks about the reviewer’s primary concern.  In your responses, if possible, offer them extended help over a phone call or through an email. This will show the potential customers that you are willing to personally address an issue faced by a customer.

Here are a few steps that the company can take to respond efficiently to the customers.

• Respond to the customers within a day rather than several weeks.
• Address the customer by their name.
• Thank the customer for putting their concerns forward.
• Apologize for not meeting the standards.
• Name the concern directly.
• If you are unable to meet the expectations, give the customer a refund, discount, credit, or another perk that is unavailable to the other customers.
• End your response to keep the communication simple and brief.

Tips for responding to the Positive Reviews

Now that you have all the tips to respond to negative reviews, here are some of the ways to respond to positive reviews.

• Your response should be prompt.
• Address the reviewer by their name.
• Thank the reviewer for sharing their reviews.
• Acknowledge the key points.
• Reward the customer with a discount on a future purchase.

These steps will help you manage positive as well as negative reviews for your business. So start addressing them in the best possible way see your business accelerate.