Online ratings and reviews are a godsend for well-run small businesses. When people are happy enough with your goods, services, and customer experience to recommend them online, it sends powerful signals to prospective buyers that your company is valuable and trustworthy. People are more likely to make purchases from businesses endorsed by individuals similar to them.
The good news is that online ratings and reviews can go beyond providing recommendations for businesses. They can also deliver valuable data and feedback that can help you improve your products, services, and overall operation. Here’s how.
View Reviews as Digital Focus Groups
Think of ratings and reviews not just as recommendations for your business but also as unfiltered focus groups with hundreds or thousands of participants. They provide highly granular feedback on consumer preferences. They can help you figure out:
What marketing claims resonate with consumers
How your business compares with competitors
What buyers like and dislike about your offerings
Common complaints about your operation
When you pay attention to these things, you can make changes that can help improve all aspects of your marketing, sales, and customer experience. Over time, you will see negative reviews diminish (although new issues could arise), which could result in driving more dollars to your bottom line. For instance:
Analyzing your reviews will give you the necessary information to improve your marketing messages and campaigns.
Your reviews can also contain information that could help you identify the next generation of products and services.
If you analyze your competitors’ reviews, you may be able to develop updates and new iterations of your products and services ahead of theirs.
Addressing customer complaints could help you find new ways to operate and elevate your business to a leading-edge status.
How to Analyze Reviews
Even though staying abreast of online reviews may seem tedious and time-consuming, it is definitely worth the effort. Not only will it allow you to identify and address customer issues promptly (which can help you turn negative situations around and present your company in a positive light) — it will also provide you with the data and information you need to improve your operation and take your business to the next level.
Either the small business owner or a team member with analysis experience should go through reviews manually. Limit your data and analysis to your worst one- and two-star reviews to keep the scope reasonable. Ask basic questions like:
What has gotten better and worse since the last analysis?
What keywords and themes consistently show up in the most negative reviews?
What categories do our bad reviews fall into? Is it marketing, sales, operations, customer service, products, services, or others?
Limiting your data to negative reviews can make it faster and easier to conduct them. However, it can prevent you from identifying opportunities to optimize your business. For instance, if you receive a lot of positive comments about a feature of one of your products or services, could you apply it to more of them?
You can also leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up your online review analysis process. Simply upload your latest reviews to an AI analysis tool and ask it to identify patterns in them. While it may miss some issues, handling the process through AI is definitely better than not doing it at all.
How to Get Started With Online Reviews
If you’re currently not collecting ratings and reviews online, it’s easy to get started. Follow these steps:
Enable customers to leave ratings and reviews on your website, Google Business Profile (GBP), social media platforms, Trustpilot, or other places. Be selective so your customers know where to go to comment on your business. Limiting review channels will also make it easier for you to monitor reviews in a timely manner.
Encourage your sales and customer support teams to ask customers to leave reviews.
Put systems in place to automatically request commentary, such as adding instructions to sales receipts and invoices or sending follow-up emails or texts.
Monitor comments consistently so you can act on negative reviews and solve issues immediately (and thank customers for positive comments).
Look for patterns in your reviews and comments that will help you find ways to improve your products, services, or overall operation.
Launching a rating and review program isn’t difficult or costly and could pay off in many ways for your business.
Online Reviews for Business Improvements: The Final Word
Small businesses have leveraged online ratings and reviews to encourage consumers to buy from them (positive reviews) or handle customer issues (negative reviews). Why not go further and use them to improve your products, services, and overall operations? A little extra time and effort could help increase your bottom-line business results.