Vive Digital

Woot Woot 🙌!  Seriously, welcome to this week’s post.  If you have worked your way through Steps #1 – #5 already, congrats to you rockstar.  

Similar to citations, Yelp, Facebook, BBB, etc all have customer reviews – so when you claim your business be sure to engage with your customers by responding to any reviews that you find there.

Your reviews will help to grow (or not) your business & reputation management is key to be the former to ensure you have an excellent reputation as this has a direct link to your rankings in local search. 

You want to proactively manage your reviews so they help to attract new customers.  To do this, you will first confirm that they had a great experience with you & if the answer is yes – ask for their feedback after you have completed work with them (or if they are an ongoing customer, after a particularly great experience with you).  And if there were any issues, be sure to resolve them right away before asking for an online review.

Make it super easy for them by creating multiple ways for them to leave a review, some options include:  

  1. Email the survey to them the same day that you have asked by using a free tool like Survey Monkey to create a professional short survey

  2. Add a “Review” button to your website

  3. Leave details on how to leave a review on the back of your business cards

Positive reviews are solid gold 🌟, so be sure to connect to your customers & show your appreciation of them – If the reviewer’s name is Tim, say something simple like, “Thank you Tim for those kind words – I absolutely loved working with you!”

While we hope for all gold star reviews, a negative review is your opportunity to flip it on it’s head & make it into a positive.

And how you respond is of utmost importance as your potential clients are going to decide if they want to work with you or not based on how you respond.  Always respond to negative reviews in a positive “how can I help make this right” manner, follow this 3 step approach & you will likely have turned a sour grape into a fan.

  1. Empathize

  2. Apologize with a positive added in about your business (something like, “I am so sorry that you experienced that, we are normally know for our exceptional customer service & I regret that didn’t happen in your experience”)

  3. Offer to help resolve the situation by talking offline, provide your name & phone number & follow up right away

And karma is brilliant – be sure to leave great reviews for the companies that you work with as all ships rise with the tide.