Today’s Guest Post is from Jack Yu at Reputology.com
Don’t buy fake reviews. Just don’t. It’s tempting, but Yelp is running sting operations to catch businesses that are trying to buy fake reviews. And the penalty is literally a mark stamped on your listing to warn visitors.
Do monitor your listings. Your first step to managing your online presence is to know what customers are saying about your business. There are plenty of no/low cost resources: Google Alerts, email alerts from the directories (if possible), and Reputology has a free version of its monitoring service.
Don’t get into arguments with reviewers. Don’t insult them and don’t use slanderous language, even if the review is blatantly false. It might turn into a PR disaster, like it did for the chef Marc Orfaly of Pigalle, who retorted to an unhappy reviewer:
“you must enjoy vomit you bitch if you know how much it tastes like. secondly, if you had any clue about eating out, or balls, you would of informed your server you were unhappy with some thing…”
So um, keep your tone professional and friendly, if not to win back that customer but to win over potential customers.
Do respond quickly. Anecdotally, I’ve heard from local businesses who claim they can get an unhappy reviewer to return or edit the review 8 out of 10 times if they can respond promptly.
Don’t respond but not follow through. You run the risk of pissing off the reviewer even more.
Do leave a public response. You should still try to message users privately if it’s possible. But a public response communicates to both old and new customers that you are attentive and care about what they have to say.
Don’t leave a generic response. Granted, there aren’t too many ways can you apologize and wish the customer give you an opportunity to give them a better experience next time. But vary your language a little bit otherwise people might think you’re on auto-pilot and not really paying attention.
Do respond to positive reviews. This is optional, but some businesses make it a policy to reply to every review to demonstrate their commitment to customer service.
Jack Yu is co-founder of a MIT startup called Reputology.com– a review monitoring and management tool to help local businesses stay ontop of what’s being said about them on the internet.
