Does Responding to Online Reviews Help or Hurt Your Business?
As a dealer, your brand reputation is everything. How your customers and the general shopping population perceive your brand directly impacts the success of your business. It has the potential to influence countless prospective customers, as online reviews, both bad and good, tend to have serious staying power on review sites and chat forums alike.
Despite the undeniable persuasive power of online reviews and the merits of modern word-of-mouth marketing, some dealers are hesitant to address their customers’ online reviews. Whether they lack the time, technical know-how or overall interest in responding to reviews, these dealers run the risk of abandoning their customer base and leaving their brand’s reputation to the whims of online personalities and opinions.
This article will help you answer the question of whether responding to online reviews helps or hurts business. It will outline the reasons why some dealers decide not to respond to online reviews and give you a few research-backed reasons why choosing to respond is always in the best interest of your business.
- The Relationship Between Online Reviews and Your Brand’s Reputation
- The Research of Responding to Reviews
- Addressing the Challenges of Responding to Online Reviews
- Does Responding to Online Reviews Help Your Business?
The Relationship Between Online Reviews and Your Brand’s Reputation
As both retail and person-to-person interaction shifts more and more online, your potential customers have a convenient place to research their interests and find the best places to do business.
Online reviews give shoppers a way to gauge their potential buying experience by relying on other consumers who have gone before. They turn to social media; review sites like Google, Yelp and Facebook; and even business’ own websites to read reviews of recent customer experiences.
This isn’t a flash in the pan of fleeting online purchase trends or a passing retail fad. It’s the new norm of researching retailers and doing business. In fact, as much as 98% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, and 76% report that they always read reviews for a business, according to BrightLocal.
What’s more, these reviews have real power to persuade, and it makes perfect sense. The internet is infamous for group think—a kind of echo chamber of information and opinions that lends itself to likeminded thinking, especially when an opinion is delivered passionately or carries some element of controversy.
In other words, if consumers read negative (or positive) online reviews, they often believe the reviewer and form an opinion of your business based on that review rather than seeking out their own experience.
In short, your reputation and your online reviews go hand in hand. You can’t separate one from the other, which is why taking control of your reviews and online reputation matter. And one of the best ways you can do that is by prioritizing responding to reviews.
The Research of Responding to Reviews
If you’ve been wondering whether responding to your reviews even matters, consider the following research-backed perspectives and best practices for responding to online reviews.
Customers Expect It
If you have a problem at your place of business, you address it. If a customer comes in unhappy, you don’t ignore them; you address their concerns and try to make things right. On the other hand, if a customer comes in happy and wants to offer you praise and compliment your products, processes and sales personnel, you don’t ignore them and pretend they don’t exist.
Your customers deserve to feel validated in their opinions, and if they have a concern, it deserves to be addressed. It might not feel the same to you, but to your customers, ignoring online reviews can feel like a total dismissal of their views and attitudes about your dealership. In other words, the equivalent of being totally ignored or stood up at your dealership.
Responding to reviews doesn’t just help you build relationships with existing customers, it has a huge impact in helping potential customers form opinions about your dealership. The majority of consumers (64%) prefer to do business with a company that’s willing to respond to reviews, even over one that has a perfect rating, according to Trustpilot.
A separate consumer study conducted by Bazaarvoice showed that nearly half of consumers say that they’re more likely to consider buying from a business that takes time to respond to customer reviews.
Consumers Rely on Reviews
Beyond validating your customers opinions, responding to reviews is common courtesy for other consumers (and future reviewers) wanting to get a complete and accurate picture of your business.
When a customer writes a review, they’re only getting one side of the dealership-customer relationship story. When you respond, they can get the full story, whether you’re responding to a positive, neutral or negative comment.
Again, 98% of consumers rely on these reviews and you owe it to them to paint a complete picture of the experience they’ll get when they come to your dealership. What’s more, an overwhelming 97% of consumers reading reviews also read the business responses, according to BrightLocal.
This shows that most consumers want to get your dealership’s side of the story and hear what you have to say and how you respond. It’s your first chance to make a first impression on consumers, well before they reach out to your dealership.
Responding to reviews also allows you to take control of your reputation and create a positive narrative about your dealership and the purchase experience future customers can expect. Instead of relying on customers alone, you can step in and craft a response that will reinforce positive narratives and flip negative narratives to show that you care.
An overwhelming 94% of people have based their decision not to buy from a business on a negative review, according to ReviewTrackers. Taking time to respond to a review gives you the chance to address concerns, validate important points made by customers and turn a negative situation into a positive one.
A Chance to Show You Care
Responding to negative reviews shows that you’re willing to address problems and take care of customers, even when they feel something has gone wrong. It shows future customers who may be researching your business that they’re in good hands. If a customer feels dissatisfied, you’re dedicated to making things right. That goes a long way toward helping people form a positive opinion of your dealership.
One way to show that you care is by responding to reviews in a timely matter. On average, your customers expect you to respond to their review within a week, according to Search Engine Journal. Some are even more demanding: one in three consumers expect a response from your business within three days or less.
Responding to your online reviews quickly not only gives you a chance to address your customers concerns, validate their opinions and get out in front of problems before they become bigger problems. It also shows other shoppers who read those reviews that you care and that you value your customers and want to give everyone the best possible purchase experience.
On the other hand, procrastinating your responses shows existing and potential customers that you may be unwilling to take consumer matters seriously or that you’re not interested in putting customers first. No one likes to wait around for a response, not at your dealership and not online.
Responding to Both Positive & Negative Reviews
Your first instinct may be to only address negative reviews and let the positive reviews speak for themselves. While this might be true for persuading prospective customers to come to your business, the customers that left the reviews may feel discouraged. They may feel disinclined (or at the very least unencouraged) to leave another review or even come back to your business.
Again, this is your chance to build brand loyalty with your customers and validate their opinions. Thank them for their business. Share something about the purchase experience that shows you remember them and that you appreciate them as customers.
This kind of review response goes a long way toward convincing customers to come back and shows potential customers that you care. It never hurts to reinforce a good relationship, and responding to online reviews may be your best opportunity to continue to build relationships with your customers.
Responding to every review, both positive and negative, also improves your SEO footprint. It gives your customers more information to research online and it gives search engines more reasons to recommend your dealership in search rankings.
Especially when you include keywords in your review responses, search engines can track and recommend your positive reviews to other customers. Just remember that your first obligation is to your customers and not to your SEO keyword planner. If a customer can tell that you’re responding to a review just to overstuff it with obvious keywords, it will come across as disingenuous and turn off existing and potential customers who read it.
Responding to all reviews encourages customers to leave their opinions of your dealership. When a customer knows that you read and respond to all your reviews, they feel that taking time out of their day to form an opinion and write a review is a worthwhile exercise.
It also encourages customers to leave more positive reviews. When customers feel validated in their opinions, they are more likely to leave opinions encouraging future customers to leave their opinions. It’s the cycle of online reputation management and it starts with your willingness to respond. In fact, according to Business News Daily, responding to reviews actually increases a business’ overall rating, leading to more positive reviews.
Addressing the Challenges of Responding to Online Reviews
Now that you know the value of responding to online reviews, it’s important to know why some dealers choose to ignore them and how you can overcome legitimate obstacles and concerns that might stop you from responding.
Not Enough Time
First and foremost, the internet is a big place. It’s daunting to think about, let alone take on, a project that involves reading and responding to every online review. This perspective is totally understandable, given how busy most dealers are and how little time they have to do anything that doesn’t involve running day-to-day operations of their business.
Difficulty Acknowledging the Negative
It can be hard to hear negative opinions of your dealership. Human nature is to ignore those that don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do. And although this might be a great strategy for self-preservation, when it comes to promoting your business, it doesn’t always work.
Still, given the amount of work you put into your business and the time you spend trying to make the purchase experience perfect for your customers, it’s understandable why some dealers choose to dismiss negative reviews.
Finding Help
If these reasons for failing to respond to online reviews sounds familiar, you may want to invest in a brand management tool and/or enlist the help of a marketing vendor who specializes in online reputation management.
A brand management tool can automate the process of generating positive reviews from your customer base and respond to online reviews. It gives you a centralized platform and all the tools to manage customer reviews from the most common places consumers choose to leave reviews. It monitors reviews and alerts you to negative reviews, so you can address them promptly and still stay on top of your business.
A dedicated reputation management marketing vendor can also be a huge benefit to your business. A marketing vendor can protect and enhance your brand identity online by monitoring and responding to reviews. This kind of partnership can help you take control of your online reputation without doing a lot of the busy work yourself.
If you’re a Dealer Spike customer using our Reputation Management tool, you can respond to online reviews faster and easier through a single interface. Click here to learn how.
Does Responding to Online Reviews Help Your Business?
If you’re still wondering whether responding to online reviews helps your business, the answer is a resounding and unequivocal yes!
In a time when your online reputation can make or break your dealership and influence countless potential customers, responding to reviews allows you to take control of your dealership’s narrative, provide convenience to customers, address concerns and problems, validate opinions and show that you care.
Reviews provide an invaluable opportunity to stay engaged in the lives of your current customers and influence potential customers to increase sales and lifelong engagement with your business. After all, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Responding to your online reviews gives your existing and potential customers a more positive outlook on your business that can have a ripple effect to boost sales and build your brand’s reputation.
Even so, it’s understandably a big job. If you need help managing your dealership’s reputation online, consider partnering with a proven marketing vendor who can help protect and enhance your brand identity online. If you’re looking for additional support to manage your online reviews and maintain a positive brand reputation, connect with Dealer Spike today to learn about our reputation management services, including our professional review response feature.