When I was on vacation this past weekend, I noticed something that I hadn’t seen much before (or maybe I’m just noticing it now that I’ve seen it – that happens). Virtually every place I went, whether it was a restaurant, a hotel, or an attraction, was soliciting online reviews and testimonials.
Now, my first reaction to this was, “These people need to be careful what they wish for,” but after taking the necessary 10 deep breaths, something occurred to me while we were on our way to our favorite ice cream place (I wasn’t going to give that place one penny more than I had to, so we skipped the dessert there). I was miffed. I wasn’t a happy camper. I could have whipped out my phone and posted a scathing review right then and there, and I kind of wanted to. The thing that got me thinking, though, is that if they’re angling for reviews, they must expect to get some bad ones, and they must have a plan for dealing with them.
That’s when I got the idea to write this blog post. There are ways to leverage all kinds of testimonials and reviews, and, from a copywriting services perspective, I started thinking about all the different ways companies deal with these things and ultimately use them to their advantage. It was then that I decided that even if I wrote a caustic review of the restaurant, it was possible that they could turn that around and make themselves look really good. I didn’t want that, so I decided to just leave well enough alone.
Leveraging Good Reviews and Testimonials
Of course, you want to let the good reviews speak for themselves, but how do you get people to read them? The best way to increase the odds is to make them as visible as possible. You absolutely can pull a customer review off a third-party site, like Yelp or TripAdvisor, and display it prominently on your site. TripAdvisor is the better source of the two because there are fewer ways for people to edit, delete, or rescind a review there. That creates a higher level of congruency between what’s on your site and what’s posted to TripAdvisor.
I recommend pairing the quote with eye-catching visuals and increasing the typeface to draw attention to it. The review should feature prominently on your home page and on any landing pages to which you are directing ad traffic.
You can, and should, also use an excerpt from the review with a good image in social media posts, especially Facebook and Twitter. Make sure that your customers’ comments are displayed as a quote and that you respond to it in the post. Something like this (with a good picture) goes a long way:
“ExpertClean saw to details that our last service just didn’t. After seeing how well they attended to things, we were more than pleased to contract with them for both of our downtown office spaces…” – Mike P., Consolidated Widgets, Inc.
Welcome to the family, Mike! We take great pride in our attention to the finer details. We’re so glad you noticed the difference.
Finally, be one of those brands that reads and responds to reviews on third-party sites. When you respond to your reviews, it shows that you take an active interest in the people your business serves. It also has a similar effect with negative reviews, which brings me to the other side of the coin…
Leveraging Negative Reviews and Testimonials
The best way to handle negative reviews is to do your best to see things from the customer’s point of view. The simple fact of the matter is that you’re not going to please everyone and, quite often, the things that upset most customers have nothing to do with the way you do business. People don’t read product descriptions, they don’t look at shipping charges … and that’s just online. In a brick-and-mortar business, there are so many things that can ruffle a customer’s feathers, it is impossible to prepare for every contingency. You can, however, prepare for how to deal with them. Here are a few tips you can employ with written responses:
1. Never, ever point a finger at the customer. All this accomplishes is making you look defensive and creates questions in the reader’s mind about how you approach “the customer is always right” philosophy. There are times when the customer is dead wrong. A written response to a bad review isn’t the time to bring that little fact to light. Doing so only tells the reader that you devalue your customers’ opinions. That is not the message you want to send.
2. Don’t try to defend yourself. Apologies that begin with an “I’m sorry” then transition into, “but…” aren’t genuine. Now is not the time to defend your position; it’s time to win back the customer and save face with the reader. Let your apology be a real apology. Don’t cheapen it with “but.”
3. Ask for input on how to improve. Nothing defuses a bad situation quite like handing the reins to customers and letting them know they have the power to orchestrate change within your organization. From the standpoint of the reader, you’re communicating that your company is forward-thinking and interested in providing a good service.
Employing these three elements, your response would look something like this:
“Hi, Kevin. We’re really sorry you had such a bad experience at our store. At Consolidated Widgets, we strive for 100% customer satisfaction, but we sometimes miss the mark. This was one of those times. Understand that we take your concern seriously and are not only looking into what happened that day but are also organizing a strategy to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. We’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can accomplish that.”
By and large, the customer only wants to be heard. Acknowledge the problem, apologize, ask for input, and those three parts of the equation work surprisingly well together.