Would that last customer give you a 5-star rating? Or no stars at all? And why should you care?
What people are saying about your business matters. Here are three reasons why your customer reviews and star power rating matters:
- People pay attention to 5-star customer reviews. They make buying decisions based on what others are saying.
- They pay even more attention to bad customer reviews. And they make decisions NOT to buy based on bad reviews.
- When people Google your business, those ratings show up.
Here’s the nugget: You can control the quality and quantity of customer reviews you get. How? That’s the secret in the stars that we’re about to reveal.
Fast facts: What the statistics say about customer reviews
Reviews impact your local rankings on search engines such as Google and Bing. Review quantity, velocity, and diversity can increase your search engine visibility by as much as 13%. As a business owner, you don’t even need to have an “upgraded” Google listing in order to have your stars show up.
How do you get those stars? It’s all about words. People who sort through and analyze numbers for a living can spot those positive and negative words faster than your customers can spit them out. It only takes two or three words to tell which direction a review is headed:
- “Thirty-minute wait”
- “Love this place”
- “Rude waiters”
- “Out of everything”
- “We’ll be back”
And the stars are assigned accordingly.
Both positive and negative reviews are helpful to your customers. They want to know where to go, and also where not to go. Your job is to make sure you show up in the “where to go” list. Unfortunately, both positive and negative reviews are not based on what’s true about your business, but rather on the experience the review writer has with you. When you are going after reviews and reviewers, be sure you ask the right people and ask them the right questions.
If you get a negative review, don’t despair. We’ll tell you how to handle that in a moment. But don’t let your business miss out on getting more positive reviews just because you’re scared of bad ones. You’re likely to get way more positive reviews than negative ones if you follow our process, and trust that negative reviews aren’t the end of the world.
What do consumers want to know?
Specifically, they want you to deliver on your brand promise. If you say your pizza will make a true Italian’s mouth water, then it better be delivered hot and flavorful. If your bed and breakfast touts its luxurious linens and stunning views, then I’d better be able to curl up in that scrumptious bed and see the ocean from every window.
These things are obvious. But sometimes it’s the less obvious things that can trip you up. If one of your wait staff is having a lover’s quarrel, it’s the customer who will suffer. If someone’s reservation got mishandled, not even an…
