Whether in #e-commerce, tourism and travel, health care, and hotels and restaurants, the image of businesses on the Internet is highly dependent on customer reviews. Indeed, their opinions may represent a threat or be beneficial to a company’s #e-reputation. Overview of this crucial reputation’s lever on the Internet and how to use customer reviews.

Currently, the opinions of Internet users, whether they are customers, prospects or third parties, are proving to be of paramount importance. While 92.7% of French people use Google to do their research, 96% of Internet users prefer to take the notes and opinions of other Internet users into account. In addition, almost 90% consider them useful before making a purchase. These opinions are particularly important in some sectors, notably the hotel and catering industry. On the other hand, they are less essential for cultural goods (individual appreciation is required) and technological goods (expert opinions are more important).

Note that for Internet users, negative opinions count as much as positive opinions. For example, 95% of Internet users make a purchase after reading a positive review, and 93% prefer to abstain after reading a negative review. In fact, the testimonials of other buyers are more important than the number of reviews or the rating assigned to a product. The majority of Internet users do not question the credibility of products and services, or of companies, even if they are aware that fake reviews are published on the Internet.

Receiving customer reviews on the various channels that make up social networks or the internet is not just luck. What is certain, without managing customer reviews, your structure is at the mercy of the most active and most often those who wish to alert on what is wrong.

Not only do reviews boost your credibility in the eyes of your customers, but they can also increase traffic to your website and improve click-through rates or the conversion of orders, sales or reservations. Most importantly, your audience’s feedback gives you valuable insight into why your customers love your product or service and most importantly what is wrong.

So how to use online reviews ?

1. Convert a negative review to a positive review

Take negative opinions into account … and quickly

No matter what industry you are in, getting negative reviews is okay. No matter how great your products are, there will always be people who are not happy for such and such a reason. In some cases, for example, it is because the product or service did not meet their real needs and expectations.

Above all, your role is not to ignore them, but on the contrary, you must take them into account, identify their reasons and respond to them, the image of your company depends on it! When the reviews are constructive, it can help you improve your products or perhaps correct errors in your operation.

One of the points is to communicate as authentically as possible. Be clear about your reaction by indicating how concerned you are about the customer’s dissatisfaction and respond quickly to show that you will go the extra mile to make things right.

This approach allows other visitors (and potential buyers) to see that you want the best for your customers. Bad reviews happen, but you can turn them to your advantage by emphasizing your willingness to do things right.

2. Spread your best reviews

Share the positive opinions received … and proudly

When you get rave reviews, don’t hesitate. Share your positive comments on your social networks and website. It’s okay to positively share what your customers are saying about you and your work.
When doing an advertisement, communication, or social media post, consider including a positive review. The attention of visitors, customers is improved when there is a surge of positivity.

This is the reason why sharing positive reviews on social networks or the internet can increase your traffic to your site directly.

Your homepage and the top ranking pages on your website should make a big impression. Studies show the average user stays on a webpage for 10-20 seconds before deciding to click.

That’s not a lot of time to capture the attention of your website visitors and keep them engaged to go further, order, book, or plan your stay.
Attract your customers by presenting the best reviews on your high traffic pages. What’s the best way to engage, welcome, and assure your visitors that you trust you than by featuring some of your best, most rave reviews ?

3. Make it easier

make it quick and easy to submit notices … and efficiently

One of the most effective ways to take advantage of online reviews is to make it easier for your audience to leave comments on your site, on your pages, or on Google.

Studies show that the more time a customer spends accessing leaving a review, the less likely they are to do so. Make it easier for them by adding a third party comment link to your web page, emails, footers and website menus. The idea here is to make it as easy and convenient as possible for your audience to praise your product or service.
You can also consider enticing your audience to leave reviews by enticing them with a benefit on a next purchase or on a next visit? This close and individualized relationship strengthens the loyalty of your customers and thus the desire to leave you more comments.

Encourage your satisfied customers to leave reviews

In the event that your business is the target of a lot of negative reviews, adopting a proactive strategy of getting your customers to post reviews is recommended. In addition to valuing each customer, this practice helps to create a balance between the opinions of dissatisfied customers and the positive ones.

To do this, after each visit, stay or online purchase, you can gauge customer satisfaction and encourage them to give their opinion thanks to an automatic e-mail.

4. Promote influencers

extend its network of influence … and widely

If you’re honored by a comment from a celebrity reviewing your service or product, then that’s a huge plus. However, many structures do not have this advantage.

On the other hand, the field of influencers is a field of potential booming lately and can transform an e-reputation.

Consider approaching popular influencers in your industry to promote or write a review for your product or service?
Why not consider sending an invite, free trial, or sample to get their feedback on your website. Sometimes, just the visit of a celebrity, an influencer from your structure, is a great opportunity to communicate. Your structure, brand or product will gain in importance and credibility if today’s influencers share their experience.

Some recommendations on capitalizing the opinions of online users

Whether you are trying to increase your customer reviews online or working to increase the confidence of your customers, these 4 steps are essential and will quickly prove their effectiveness.

Continually continue to follow your customer opinions, promote them or elicit them to get the best benefits for your sales. But collecting online reviews is not the only lever to activate, to help improve customer satisfaction. After this step, it is essential to have an effective moderation strategy. Internally, the management and moderation phase of customer feedback is essential. 

• Set up a rapid and relevant response strategy : the management of reviews is ideally done on a single platform, to facilitate the work of the teams in charge of customer relations. Establish a language charter, so that all employees use the right terms and turns of phrase, when responding online. A maximum response time can also be set, to provide a fast response (even in real time). Finally, it is essential to ensure that each response is personalized, to improve the customer relationship.
• Contact dissatisfied customers before posting the review : during the moderation stage, or before a visit leaves or in the event of a dispute or dissatisfaction, intervene to reverse the trend and provide an immediate solution. They are therefore strongly advised to contact customers in the event of dissatisfaction. In this situation, the goal is to come up with a solution to transform the feeling of dissatisfaction. Ultimately, consumers will be able to change their review before publication, if they believe the experience has improved. On the business side, this strategy helps transform #Detractors into #Promoters, and thus strengthen customer satisfaction.
• Analyze feedback in real time : each opinion collected is an opportunity to improve. Whether it is about your products, your services, customer relations in store or with after-sales service … During the management and moderation stage, the challenge is to be proactive, as soon as possible. receipt of a notice. No need to wait for a significant volume of customer feedback to start taking action. Do not hesitate to continuously measure and analyze feedback, to improve customer satisfaction every day. 

To ensure maximum customer satisfaction and aim for 5 stars, the idea is not to satisfy every customer on time. Your mission is to guarantee continuous satisfaction with regular customers. And to achieve this objective, my advice is to start by retaining your satisfied customers, then to set up a customer engagement process … In order to build solid relationships over time. 

Some good practices to put in place :

• Set up rewards, for loyal customers: did you know that a + 5% increase in the retention rate can boost a company’s profitability by 25 to 95% ? These numbers confirm the importance of retaining satisfied customers. With this in mind, it is advisable to set up recurring loyalty actions, such as exclusive promotions, invitations to events or personalized service offers (free delivery, “personal shopper” in store, personalized welcome, etc.)
• Promote your satisfied customers, on all your channels : to boost customer engagement, don’t hesitate to take a step towards enhancing satisfaction. Indeed, if you highlight positive customer reviews on your website, on your social networks or on in-store POS, you are showing “to the world” the importance attached to the customer experience. Don’t hesitate to promote customer satisfaction through dynamic formats, such as video.
• Involve loyal customers in co-construction projects : Improving customer satisfaction also requires greater customer involvement in the heart of the company’s projects. Our advice: identify committed customers, who regularly take the time to submit post-purchase opinions … And invite them to a workshop to co-create a new product or service.

To improve customer satisfaction over the long term, the most effective approach is to develop the collection, management and dissemination of customer reviews. 

When these feedbacks are obtained through precise and personalized satisfaction questionnaires, their benefits are multiple: they make it possible to disseminate an internal customer culture, to continuously improve the product or service strategy or to strengthen the customer strategy. customer loyalty and engagement.

The aim must be to create a lasting relationship of trust, this is the key word for your good reputation on the Internet.