In previous blogs we have discussed the power of feedback, and how important it is to get it right, do it obsessively, and make sure that it is done in a way that your customer engages with you, before they have left you.
So that you can not only build your reputation with them but are also given an early warning of any negative reputation that is about to go on to the public domain.
So, if you get your feedback systems right, and your business is built around the four empowering and common sense principles of ‘The 4 Vital Principles of Business Success’, then, whatever online reviews you get, you can turn it into a business advantage and long-term sales growth.
How is this?
4 reasons:
- You will be able to gather and proactively sort out any problems before they go online.
- You will have far more online positive reviews than you would have by leaving it to chance.
- You will have a great and genuine reputation.
- You will be able to positively respond to any negative online reviews because you have such great systems.
How does this work in practice?
If you get a great review, it’s not only tells you what you are doing right, but also tells the world to trust you and do business with you. It also gives you an opportunity to respond and thanks them online and to talk about your loyal customer schemes etc.
If you get a “just OK” review, it gives you the opportunity to react to it and to put things right by outlining the excellent systems you have and inviting them to feedback direct to you. Then you can not only turn them into a raving fan by reacting positively to their feedback, but also you’ll be giving a very public display of how important customer experience and loyalty is to you, and generating high levels of trust and reputation in public.
If you get a poor review, it gives you an opportunity to tell the world the truth about your organisation. Other people like reading poor reviews much more than they like reading great reviews, so you will have more opportunity for sales building PR from a poor review.
If the poor review is fair, it’s not only gives you the information you need to stop yourself going out of business (for which, on its own, you should sincerely thank the customer), it also gives you the opportunity to react to it constructively in the public domain, so everyone who reads the poor review will see how caring and willing to engage with customers, you are.
Customers can easily accept that you can make mistakes and things can go wrong, but customers will never forgive you for not caring and not reacting kindly and positively to problems: a poor review is a great opportunity to blow everyone’s socks off.
And, in addition, this will identify possible cracks in your feedback systems, so you can continually improve them (and your customer loyalty and reputation) using your ‘Go the extra inch’ systems.
If the poor review isn’t fair, you must assume that it is probably fair in the eyes of the reviewer and you react in a very similar way to the above: tell the viewer (and all the other viewers worldwide) what you think may possibly have happened, and how you always seek to accept feedback to help you continually learn and grow. An unfair feedback is an amazing opportunity to react positively and show the world how emotionally intelligent you are and how they should rush to be your customer.
Investors in Feedback will work with your organisation, not only to make sure your feedback systems are doing the vitally important jobs that are needed from them, but also to make sure that you know how to react to all feedback, good, bad or indifferent, in order to turn every review or online comment into a PR triumph and yet another reason for customers to flock to you time and time again.