Do you know what your customers are saying about you online? Should you care? And, more importantly, how do you find out – and what do you do about it once you do find out?
These are all questions that you must know the answers to if you want to be successful in today’s world. Like mobile marketing, social media and all other new methods of marketing, reputation management is more important than ever.
Let me give you a recent example that will help bring this idea home. A friend of mine has been visiting the same repair shop for more than 30 years. He has three cars and each of them need regular maintenance and service.
My friend needed new tires – and not knowing anything about tires, he went online to do some research. Now in his mind, he was just going to go to his usual repair shop that also sells tires. So he went online and typed in “tires.”
Because Google knows where its users are located (whether on a smartphone, tablet or computer), it automatically provides the closest businesses that provide the product or service one is searching for. In this case, it showed him the particular auto repair facility that he had intended to go to anyway.
But he was shocked by what he saw. There on the Google search results page were numerous reviews of this shop, and all rated it poor to fair. As my friend continued reading, he saw horror stories of past customers recounting how they were ripped off, how the shop was not to be trusted.
Naturally, he was scared by all of this, even though he had never had a bad experience himself. Then again, he realized, he didn’t know much about auto repair or tires or anything else related to his car. Because they had seemed to know what they were doing, he simply had trusted them.
Guess What He Did?
In the end, the man in this example went to a tire dealer that also was close to his home and purchased four all-season tires for a total of $932.43.
What your customers are saying about you online does matter.
The bad news for this repair shop was not that it lost a $900 sale – it had lost my friend as a customer, one that had three vehicles to be serviced and maintained.
But it’s even worse: because he told me this story, I now will never go there. And you can be sure he has told all of his friends and neighbors and probably his co-workers, too.
One bad review doesn’t mean one lost customer. You must consider how many others are seeing those reviews, how they are reacting, who they are telling, and how many are staying away. This is the type of scenario that can destroy a business – quickly!
Reputation Management
Take a look at the information presented in the accompanying chart:
• 62% of people read online reviews before making a decision to buy
• 72% trust these reviews as much as a personal recommendation from a friend
There are some other important stats on the graphic, but stop and think about these two points for a minute. It’s almost like you are naked online and anyone can say anything they want about you – and others will trust those recommendations.
It makes little sense that people will buy into a stranger’s recommendations, but that is the brave new world of retailing.
I recently met with the owner of an oil and lube franchise with six locations. During our meeting, I shared with him a detailed report we ran regarding his online reputation. There were a few bad reviews and he seemed very upset. Then he blurted out that “this was pure, unadulterated #@$@#&$” (please use your imagination).
This is a very frustrating situation, so I understood where he was coming from. But it doesn’t matter whether the reviews are true or not – it only matters that other potential customers are seeing this information and they do accept it as being true.
Oftentimes, after hours of investigation, we are able to get to the bottom of the bad review. Perhaps it was a simple misunderstanding or some miscommunication. Maybe it was more sinister, like an angry ex-employee or a competitor who wants to hurt your business. Maybe it was a legitimate issue that was not handled properly.
But whatever the case, you need to spend the time and do the detective work to resolve the issue. I know a dealer in North Carolina that makes this a key mission with every complaint, and once the matter is resolved the shop asks the customer to go back and either rescind their bad review or offer an addendum about how the problem was corrected.
He truly gets it.
No business is perfect and no business is ever able to have 100% of their customers be totally happy. But that doesn’t mean you won’t get a bad review.
So where can you start?
1. Find out what people are saying about you. (As a subscriber of Tire Review, we are offering a free evaluation report at mywebreputationreport.com.)
2. Start monitoring what is being said about you online.
3. Create or modify business systems in order to generate five-star reviews.
4. Market those five-star reviews at all of the influential websites – Google, Yelp, etc.
In order to be rated, your business must have at least 10 online reviews. Obviously you want the majority of these reviews to be four- and five-star ratings.
The ratings are important, as you’ve seen. But it is more important to have a customer service culture within your business. This is the best way to encourage your customers to leave their positive comments and feedback.
Brian Sacks is a mobile marketing expert with more than 26 years of direct response marketing experience. He is co-founder of Trackable Response Inc., a mobile marketing provider to the tire and auto service industries, based in Catonsville, Md. Brian can be reached at [email protected] or 410-747-1100.
