When you make an online purchase or look for a a vendor, product or service, you likely first go somewhere to read online reviews. Any time I’m shopping on Amazon for a new product I often sample both the 5-star and 1-star reviews. I guess I’m a sucker for the extremely positive and extremely negative, but I pay close attention to any comments about the durability of the product, etc.
In the same way, I head to Yelp before dining at a new restaurant, looking out for any feedback about their food or service. I’m likely to go elsewhere if I see repeated mentions of unfriendly staff, hairs in food, or long waits even with a reservation.
NumberBarn is no different. Customers constantly review us and read reviews about us. They love to talk about number porting, calling features, our mobile app and the quality of our customer support. I’d love to tell you that we’ve earned all 5-star reviews but that’s not always the case.
While we should always strive to be the best we can be, research indicates that perfection isn’t necessarily required. A study on the role of online reviews and purchase probability suggests that the likelihood customers will buy increases when review ratings reach about 4.5 out of 5 stars. After that, buyers begin to question the authenticity of the review site and company. With too many perfect reviews, users may begin to question the credibility of the reviews and wonder if the system is rigged. So, 5-stars across the board could actually scare away buyers.
Does that mean that bad reviews aren’t always a bad thing?
Shoppers are 51.4% more likely to shop elsewhere after reading an online review of 3-stars or less out of 5-stars, according to research by SSRN (formerly the Social Science Research Network). That’s a significant number – and the concerning part is that many of those people never give companies a chance to explain themselves. They just quietly click on the next company in their search results and give them their business.
While we’re proud of our substantial 5-star reviews at NumberBarn, we’ve also earned some clunkers along the way. Even though negative reviews can hurt customer perception of our brand, we do have an opportunity to turn the tide of negativity in the way we respond.
A bad review is an excellent opportunity to weigh in on customer feedback, observe any patterns, and learn new ways to improve. Here’s our approach to monitoring and responding to online reviews, how we turn the negatives into positives, and some tips for customer experience (CX) leaders building out this practice in their organizations.
We Try to ALWAYS Listen EVERYWHERE
I would love it if every customer just contacted us directly when they have a problem – but that isn’t the world we live in. Customers talk to and about us all over the place. This includes Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Google Reviews, TrustPilot, Reddit, App stores and many other random places. Furthermore, customers can contact regulatory companies like the Better Business Bureau and Federal Communications Commission.
Additionally, a couple of years ago, we announced our online community site called Community Corral and regularly hear from customers via that platform. I love it when they take the time to request features that would benefit them. And we can say that we frequently integrate those suggestions into our products and customer experience. But many customers also use it to rant about an issue knowing that we watch the community forum closely.
I say this to highlight the fact that customers talk about us in many, many places. If customers have a bad experience somewhere, they frequently just quietly go elsewhere. So we count it as a positive any time a customer chooses to post about us, even if it’s negative. This gives us the opportunity to respond, not in a defensive manner, but always with the aim of helping and trying to restore a relationship with that customer.
The bottom line is that if customers are talking about NumberBarn anywhere on the Internet, we always try to hear and join those conversations.
We Aim to ALWAYS Act
Online mentions and reviews of our company are always a call to action. Let’s start with the positive reviews. These are an indicator that we did something right. We take the time to post these to an internal Slack channel, celebrating the people who take great care of our customers. And we always try to thank our customers for taking the time to give us a positive, public shout out.
The negative ones aren’t nearly as fun, but action in these situations is even more critical. There’s a bit of work required before we’re ready to respond. First, we have to try to identify the reviewer. Sometimes it’s obvious and their screen name correlates to an account in our database. In these cases, we may be able to find an existing support ticket that gives us an idea why the customer is posting negatively about our company.
In some cases the reviewer’s screen name for a particular website doesn’t match a customer in our database. Some sites, like TrustPilot give us a mechanism to ask the reviewer to provide more information so we can identify their account. For others, we post publicly, stating that we’re unable to identify the customer and ask them to contact support and reference their review. It doesn’t happen often but a handful of customers have taken us up on this offer, allowing us a chance at resolving the issue.
Getting to the root of the matter.
The next step in the process necessitates an open mind, with a desire to problem solve with the customer, while avoiding a defensive or emotional response. As we review the complaint and any related interactions with the customer, we strive to get to the root cause of their issue. Here are some questions we ask:
- Were we slow in responding and processing?
- Did we provide the customer with incorrect or incomplete information?
- Could we have been more friendly?
- Even though we fixed their issue, could it have been prevented in some way?
Identifying these root causes is positive action toward ensuring that we prevent these issues from happening in the future.
We Do Our Best to ALWAYS Respond
Yes, you heard me right. We try to always respond to online reviews – even if a negative review borders on trolling. It’s critical that our customers and potential customers see and know that we are responsive. In a world where people increasingly suspect that lifeless, artificially intelligent bots are taking over customer service jobs, we boldly offer intelligent, human responses.
Let’s talk about some of the ingredients of the response.
I know it may sound odd, but I typically thank all reviewers for posting a review because they gave us a chance to make it right. Before we respond publicly, we always try to resolve and respond privately first in the best channel possible. While customer support occurs via email or chat at NumberBarn, in some cases I will reach out by phone to make a human connection with the customer.
Assuming we were able to come to some sort of understanding or resolution privately, the public response to the customer contains only information that’s suitable for public consumption. It’s acceptable to explain policies and processes and actions taken to resolve the issue, while avoiding the mention of any account-specific details.
We always strive to stay professional and positive, resisting the urge to take it personally and respond in any kind of insulting way – regardless of how warranted it may feel at the moment. This includes how we respond to people who are angry because their account was terminated for violating our terms of service.
3 Practical Tips to Becoming More Responsive to Online Reviews
1. Assign responsibility.
If no one is responsible for responding to online reviews I can assure you that there are two things that will happen. First, no one will respond consistently to customers and this will quickly erode customer trust in your brand. Second, you will drive company executives nuts and deter potential customers when they see negative reviews and social media posts with no response from the company.
A good approach for a CX leader is to take ownership of responding to these. A great approach is to make an entire team responsible for owning and responding to reviews. This is an ongoing process with our support team to train them to respond comfortably in a public forum.
2. Integrate with your existing tools.
Logging in to 10+ platforms to check for new customer reviews isn’t sustainable. Customers will get missed. As much as possible, we funnel these notifications into our support ticketing system so that multiple people can see them. When that’s not possible, we set up a multiple email forward that notifies 3-5 people any time we receive a review on the site so a NumberBarn team member can quickly read, act and respond.
3. Respond according to your style guide.
The only thing worse than not responding is reacting and responding emotionally (“responding versus reacting” as some might say). Responding defensively with arguments and attacks quickly turns your brand into a dumpster fire. No one wants to do business with a company that belittles their customers. These are often public responses and must be done so with extreme care. Respondents should be fluent in your brand style guide while clearly demonstrating that they are expert problem solvers who also happen to be human.
Bonus tip: keep it organic
We’ve all visited a grocery store, restaurant, etc. and had an employee circle something on our receipt and say “Please go to this site and give me a 5-star review so I can get my bonus.” This is called “Survey Begging” and it’s a tacky practice at best.
At NumberBarn we don’t beg for reviews. Instead, we aim to provide an excellent product and service and love it when our customers feel compelled to leave us reviews. And we greatly value their honest feedback.
When customers leave negative reviews, we acknowledge that they left a negative review and work to resolve their issue. We never ask customers to change their rating – but many feel compelled to do so after making a meaningful connection with another human being who can solve their issue.
In the case of positive reviews, don’t forget to celebrate. We post them internally, read them in company-wide meetings and occasionally post the really good ones on our social media profiles.
If you have questions or perhaps anything to add to what we’re doing here at NumberBarn, feel free to contact us and tell us how we’re doing. We’re eager to respond and see how we can turn a happy customer into an ecstatic one!
