You should respond to online reviews because it is part of customer service. Online reviews provide valuable feedback into your products or services. They are created by your customers. Whether good or bad, a response shows that you care and are paying attention. Your responses can be reviewed by potential customers who are researching your Seattle business.
Good reviews are the easiest to respond to because a short note is all that is required. You can simply thank the reviewer for the review and maybe point out one unique item from their review. In order to not look too eager, you don’t have to respond to all good reviews especially if the review is short to begin with.
Bad reviews are much harder to respond to but a response is crucial to your business customer service effort. Bad reviews represent a product or service that failed to meet the customers expectation. When responding, it is very important to not take personal offense or reply back in a negative tone. This doesn’t help resolve the compliant and looks very bad on the reputation of your company. Your response should ask the customer to contact your company to discuss what isn’t right and look to way to make it right.
Sometimes, there is no way to make every customer happy. In these case, explain in your response what you tried to do and leave it at that. It will show people you might read the review in the future that you tried which goes a long way to building trust.
To summarize, it is important to respond to online reviews that are both good and bad. It shows that your Seattle company cares about its customers.
