It can’t be said enough, those who speak best about your products are your own customers! This positive digital word-of-mouth is a valuable tool for building trust among internet users. However, when negative, it can seriously impact consumers’ purchase intention and ultimately endanger your online reputation. Why should you always respond to a negative review? How can you respond effectively? Trustt supports you in collecting your customer reviews, moderating them, and publishing your response.
Why is it Important to Respond to Negative Customer Testimonials?
Dissatisfied customer reviews have a real deterrent potential that should not be neglected! However, you shouldn’t fear them.
Keep in mind that responding to negative comments is an integral part of your overall customer experience management strategy, and even if you’re impeccable, they are generally unavoidable. It’s an opportunity for you to project a positive image of your brand.
Publishing them and responding appropriately allows you to:
- Maintain control over your brand image;
- Generate an image of a responsible company that is accessible and attentive to its customers;
- Show your audience that you place customer satisfaction at the heart of your e-commerce approach,
- Demonstrate that your goal is continuous improvement of your product offering.
Responding to these negative comments is a sign of trust and quality. I t can help you win back dissatisfied customers and even attract new ones.
In fact, according to a Harris Interactive survey, among 68% of consumers surveyed who received a response following the publication of a negative review, 33% of them posted a positive comment in return and 18% became loyal customers.
How to Respond to a Negative Review?
Here are some best practices to follow for effectively managing a negative review:
Respond Quickly
The response should be published promptly after receiving the review. Being responsive and attentive to your customers’ feedback contributes to improving your brand image. When you receive a negative comment, be sure to react quickly so that the review’s author doesn’t become impatient and the situation doesn’t escalate. Ideally, post your response within the day following the publication of the negative testimonial. If you need to conduct an investigation following a customer’s feedback, send an initial response indicating that you have acknowledged it and that you will get back to them with a more detailed response in the coming days.
Maintain a Courteous and Professional Tone
Start by thanking the review’s author, even if their feedback seems unfair or virulent. Always adopt a polite and calm tone. Keep in mind that your response can be read by your customers and prospects… So, never respond in the heat of the moment!
Be Reassuring
Show that your customers’ opinions about your products matter to you. Your response should inspire a sense of trust. Reassure your interlocutor and explain that their dissatisfaction is taken very seriously.
Write a Short but Personalized Response
Your response should be short, unique, personalized, and provide the person with information that could not have been obtained otherwise. Avoid publishing a generic response that you might have copied and pasted from another similar complaint, as there’s a risk that internet users browsing the reviews will notice…
How to Moderate Negative Customer Reviews?
To manage negative customer reviews and prevent them from turning into bad publicity, it is advisable to conduct regular monitoring and careful scrutiny of everything said about your brand and products, both in comments left on your website, as well as on social media, forums, and your Google My Business page.
As you’ve understood, customer reviews play a major role in your e-reputation! These testimonials are often seen as indicators of quality and sincerity by internet users. This is why many brands today are implementing actions to collect reviews and feedback from their customers.
The solution developed by Trustt allows brands to obtain additional qualified reviews to promote their products and then deposit these authentic and qualified reviews, collected during ambassador campaigns, directly on their e-commerce site.
Before publication, these reviews must be validated by the moderator(s) in charge of monitoring the brand’s e-reputation, via the Trustt dashboard where all received reviews are centralized (those collected during your ambassador campaigns and those received spontaneously from your customers via the Trustt Review module).
To avoid missing any, all reviews are classified by type of buyer (verified buyer, ambassador, spontaneous, and imported) and then by status (pending, validated, validated with response…).
The Trustt dashboard allows for the rejection of abusive reviews whose content would not be in line with the general terms of use of the consumer review service and the brand’s charter.
Caution! Only delete “a customer’s review” in case of abusive comments. Even if “the author is discourteous or virulent in their message… Not displaying negative customer reviews would be perceived as deception and could” damage your e-reputation.
The advantage of the tool created by Trustt is the ability to perform all actions via the software:
- Setting up product campaigns;
- Selecting brand ambassadors;
- Receiving written testimonials accompanied by photos or video reviews;
- Moderating testimonials and classifying all these contents;
- The ability to respond to various customer reviews via the dashboard to then publish them on the e-commerce site;
- Access to statistics to measure the impact of all these marketing actions.
Finally, don’t forget that your customers’ reviews, even negative ones, are a real opportunity for improvement and growth for your brand! Use them to identify issues and continuously improve your offer as well as all aspects of your customer journey.
