The Customer Review – The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly
Good customer service is expensive, excellent customer service is more expensive, but poor customer service is the most expensive. The service you deliver at the point of sale, as well as after the sale, will dictate what kind of reviews your customers will give you – either to your face or behind your back. The good news – most folks will describe their experience in detail. The bad news – most folks will describe their experience in detail.
Rarely do we bat 1,000 – even Babe Ruth struck out. If you have a bad review every now and then it’s to be expected. But a string of less than favorable reviews can be devastating to your “online” presence and ruin your opportunity to gain new business. But don’t miss the chance to respond to a bad review.
Action Steps:
- Implement a customer service program to offer rewards or discounts for your customer base in exchange for them taking the time to place a positive review for you.
- This will help to counteract negative reviews. It will make them look smaller in scope in the overall review picture.
- Ask your customers how you can improve your service and start implementing those changes.
- Over time your customers will notice and start posting more positive reviews.
- Create a company culture for good customer service and put together a plan on what you want to change and offer customers.
- Train your staff on how to give good customer service.
- Remove staff members that do not buy into the new, positive customer service model.
- Turn your staff into a team by offering employee incentives for each positive review.
- Offer a special event for key clients, vendors, suppliers and media reps and ask them if they have had a good experience to share it with an online review.
- Hire a company to manage your local directory business listings. At present, there are approximately 1,200 plus search directories where your business can be listed to enhance your brand and image. You certainly want to ensure that anything negative about your business is addressed so you don’t have the negative repercussions of bad reviews.
Having people add positive reviews each month helps your business. You want to keep the good reviews coming each and every month – it is a direct reflection on the consistency of your customer service. But just in case they don’t…don’t fail to respond to the bad or the ugly.
If you are in the Synergy Station Directory be sure to take advantage of the customer review feature on your listing.
