I am thinking about all these reviews, pouring in from all the direction and while moving lengths and breaths to address them, companies are lost. As a result they are missing out on a big opportunity to elevate customer experience and instil some loyalty. It’s always important that companies prioritise these reviews before reacting to them, which not many companies are doing it right now. Companies should find out pointers to make their offering better from these reviews. Instead they are trying to cover up the issue on top level or pacify customer. Trust me when I say this as a customer that, when your customer is giving a bad review it’s not always to show the brand in bad light or trying to get some extra % off deal. It’s because their trust/expectation that is taking a hit. This is invariable making customers looking into those other review lenses before trusting (or keeping my trust on) a brand voice.
Why am I feeling in this way? Because companies are replying to all of these reviews in a predefined manner (ctrl+c and ctrl+v of template). They are creating a cheatsheet and replying back in a manner which don’t speak to the customer in their language. As a result they are not addressing their real customers (who matters for business) with the right precision & importance it’s worthy of. My personal take is we should take these review and add little salt before addressing. This salt is the reviewers ‘business result weight’.
To explain the situation in a very crude way lets take an example, I have a restaurant and one fine day my chef is absent. The supply chain gets effected, resulting either bad food or delayed service. Which can translates into 10-20 bad reviews online, what should I do? Should I reply back to all of them and pacify them? Or prioritise each response on the base of my regular customer, loyal customer and then irregular customer and treat them differently? Like for loyal customer I can be true to explain the situation and serve some discount coupon while regular customer can be conversed with truth in a more personal way to seek redemption. While for irregular customers I may apologise for the experience and then request for a visit back so that we can get another chance to elevate their experience.
As per my lens this will not only solve the issue in most economic but also very effective way instilling some loyalty. For loyal or regular people there is nothing more special than personal recognition from the brand itself.
But that’s again my lens…..
This is a personal scribble ground. The opinions expressed here are all personal they do not express any direct or indirect linkage to the organization I am attached to. But I love changes so they might be changing time to time. :o)
