How can I use customer reviews to improve my business?

Customer reviews are an underrated tool for improving your business. Whether they’re glowing or scathing, reviews tell you what customers expect from their experience, and what you can do to give it to them. Maybe you need to improve your service or be more accurate with quotes. Learning what works and what doesn’t is key to building a loyal following.

You can use customer reviews to help in three different ways: to build better operations, to create better improvement plans and to improve your online marketing.

Gather Reviews in One Place

With reviews spread across multiple sites, it can be easy to miss patterns. When you’re alerted to reviews one at a time, you don’t know whether a complaint is a one-off or a recurring problem that needs addressing. A single bad review, after all, can look very different when it’s one among dozens of others just like it. For this reason, gather reviews in one place so you can see the bigger picture.

You can look at the overall statistics to see at a glance whether sentiment is mostly positive or negative. You can dive in and see whether the positive reviews share any common reasons for customers being pleased, and whether there are recurring complaints.

Your first decision is whether to use a manual or automated system for centralizing your reviews.

A lot of your customers will post to the three giants of review websites - Google, Facebook and Yelp.

If you haven’t already claimed your profile, head to each site and follow the instructions for doing so.

There are industry sites, too: Avvo for lawyers and Healthgrades for doctors, while Zillow covers real-estate agents.

Your industry’s sites are particularly important because customers who visit these sites are actively looking for businesses like yours. Any customer reviews they write will be more detailed than on the general sites, and will be more relevant to the problems and advantages you offer.

If you don’t have many reviews, the simplest approach is to manually copy reviews from third-party sites by hand. If you can find the time, it’s as simple as going through each of your review sites - Google, Facebook and Yelp, for instance - and copying and pasting them all into a single document.

You can also copy the ratings as well, allowing you to keep track of your overall average rating, so you can gauge if you’re improving over time. The more reviews you have, the more cumbersome the process becomes.

This time-consuming task can be done automatically using software.

Instead of copying and pasting reviews, you can pull them all together in one place automatically using a review management service. When you get a new review, you can see it on your dashboard.

Review-tracking services have another advantage beyond automation. Being able to filter reviews allows you to see all reviews from a particular site at a glance, and more importantly, filter them based on positive or negative ratings. For franchises, this aspect is especially helpful because the management can learn from experiences across stores.

Where You Need to Improve

Now that you’ve aggregated all your reviews in one place, what should you do with them? Review management helps you see where customer needs and expectations line up with your business and where you need to improve.

Decide on the key things you want to learn and look for them specifically. Why are you looking at reviews in the first place, and what kind of improvements do you want to make?

For an average business, about 19% of reviews are negative. Negative reviews can be unpleasant reading, but they’re vital for discovering what’s working and what’s not.

You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it exists, and there’s no better resource than a customer who’s unhappy with your service or product.

Recurring themes are most important for improving your business, so the first thing to do with your negative reviews is look for patterns.

Filter by negative reviews and see whether there’s anything that keeps popping up.

What you think is a solitary complaint might, in fact, represent a widespread feeling among your customer base.

Open the document with your negative reviews and either highlight everything negative that appears more than once, or list the complaints somewhere else. If you do the latter, you can count how many times each complaint appears, which allows you to know what’s most important to fix.

If you have software that lets you filter your negative reviews, you can do the same thing as if you’re finding them manually, but it’s faster.

That’s a real bonus if you have a lot of negative reviews.

By assigning tags to reviews, you can filter them to show all reviews that mention a certain issue. Another potential advantage of a third-party review management service is that you can see reviews left on third-party websites without needing to visit them individually. Customers are more inclined to be candid on third-party sites, so their feedback is more useful for learning where you need to improve.

No matter your business, you can improve operations by reading customer reviews.

Most hair salons, for example, want to know whether a hairstylist is talented enough to keep customers returning. Were they happy with their haircut or color?

An “Insights Report” filters your reviews by keyword, letting you see the most common reviews, and which positive and negative keywords appear most often. The report for Prestige Salon in Watertown, South Dakota, tells you that customers often mention “amazing job,” “prestige” and a stylist, “Haley.” You can see at a glance what areas you excel in and what you can do to stay on top.

You can also filter reviews by the “rating type,” whether positive, neutral or negative.

Google offers review attributes for 275 industries and counting. Filtering by Attributes lets you see how you measure up in the key areas you want customers to know about.

Common attributes include cleanliness, professionalism and punctuality.

Use the attribute filter to see what people expect from your business and how you can refine your services.

Whether you own an independent restaurant or a national chain, you’re expected to provide good food, a comfortable atmosphere and timely service.

Give your problem locations extra attention by filtering reviews for specific words. If a manager’s letting their team slack off, you’ll see complaints of poor service or customers spending too long in line.

Take Bartaco, a taco franchise restaurant, which has a location in Boston.

A business report with benchmarking capability lets you compare locations and see how much they vary. Executives can compare the Boston location with each of its branches, whether a single one or a group.

With an HVAC business, expect that customers will look at punctuality, professionalism and quality as important aspects.

This information allows the HVAC company to improve how they work to align more closely with what people expect. It’s all about knowing where you excel and what you need to improve.

A Reviews Report collects and groups all your reviews in one place. You can see every review you’ve received for multiple locations on multiple websites in a single list.

Then, download your report as a CSV file that you can share with your team and use to build an improvement plan.

Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, it’s time to build a plan for tackling them.

For multi-location companies, benchmarking lets you take learnings from one branch and apply them to others. Each of your branches can offer lessons that every other location can learn from. If you own a chain of grocery stores, one branch might be known for friendly service, while the other gets complaints about long lines, slow service and empty shelves.

A detailed review can explain what makes a company good. If you can emulate those elements, you can enjoy the same results.

Long-form reviews have their own value because they contain rich, descriptive details that help you know what your business does well and what it needs to work on.

If a lot of your customers complain that you’re too slow, do you need to take on more staff at peak times, or could your team work more efficiently?

You can use reviews to shape your business, not just to improve what you already offer.

If you’re testing out a new pilot program, whether it’s a new promotion, new location, or a service or product you want to get the customers’ feedback on, reviews help you see if it’s worth putting the time, money and effort into it.

Picture Nekter Juice Bar. They open in a new location and want to know if the new place is having a positive impact.

Reviews are also an important source of information for team motivation.

Share some great customer reviews with your team, and explain what the reviewers were happy about.

You’d be surprised how often customers will mention your employees by name in positive reviews.

Positive reviews can be used to recognize team members. When their work is appreciated, they’re happier.

Use negative reviews as a guide for training to improve your employees’ work and avoid unpleasant reviews in the future.

Consider the case of a local cafe franchise that received complaints that employees couldn’t answer questions about their menu. They added training on menu items, covering popular questions, ingredients, and dietary restrictions. Your business could add the same kind of training based on the complaints you receive.

Replying to reviews shows customers that you value them and what they think.

Half of customers expect at least occasional responses to reviews. Take the time to thank them with a few quick words for giving you their time. Let them know you value their opinion.

Businesses that respond to at least 25% of reviews average 35% more revenue.

If you have time, write a genuine response to every review. Thank the customer for writing it and, if appropriate, respond to the content. The purpose of responding to a negative review is to show the reviewer you’ve taken their concerns seriously and have done what you can to resolve their issue.

A good owner response to a negative review thanks the reviewer, explains what went wrong and what you’ll do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It’s an old truism that first impressions count. But while first impressions are important, they don’t count for everything.

It’s always good to please new customers, but reviews from regulars will be more detailed. They’ll talk about the service, the staff and the products. They’ll have a better feel for what you do. These kinds of reviews are more likely to give you actionable feedback and valuable insights into your business.

If you own an HVAC company, a regular customer might write a long, detailed review that praises each staff member by name, from the office staff to the technician that installed a system.

Reviews allow you to show that you take care of your customers and work to make things right. By addressing criticism, you can turn poor reviews into positive reviews. By taking the customer’s side, you can regain their respect.

Not every review is positive. That’s the case of your HVAC company that gets an occasional angry tirade, but those negative reviews are opportunities to turn things around. When you’re faced with a negative review, treat it as if it were the most useful customer insight you’ve ever had.

Promoting Your Business

Real-life examples of your business in action paint a better picture than advertising that’s been written by your marketing team. A review that praises your fast service, for instance, can be perfect for your advertising if your competitors are slow.

Use your best reviews for promoting your business. Pull the most positive, relevant parts of your reviews, and use them for advertisements.

For a lot of customers, what you say about your business isn’t as persuasive as what others say about it. Sure, you can talk up your fast service and polite staff, but that’s easy for anyone to claim.

Reviews are a source of social proof, which is the evidence that others have tried your product or service and loved it.

By displaying reviews on your website, you let customers see that others have had a good experience with you, and that tells people that you’re trustworthy.

California Pools recognize the social proof power of reviews, so they display their reviews on their website.

A Reviews Widget lets you embed your reviews in your site, showing your rating and best reviews in a dynamic display.

You can tag reviews for your website so they only show reviews relevant to one team member, one location or one service. For franchisees and real estate agents, a widget can be set up to display reviews specific to a location or agent.

Reviews are an important part of the website, but it’s not just any reviews that you want to show.

Group your first-party reviews into categories that highlight what customers value. This lets you show potential clients that each service is well-regarded.

Prospects want to know they can trust you for their specific issue. They will look for reviews on the service they’re thinking of buying.

If you have pages on your site for specific services, then people who land on that page will be interested in those reviews.

A gym should show yoga reviews on the yoga teacher’s page.

An HVAC company can show boiler repair reviews on their boiler page.

A real estate agency can show their agents’ reviews on their profile.

A third-party review is more trustworthy than marketing copy, so if you own an agency, post the ones that mention your agents by name on their profile pages.

Your reviews are a powerful social media tool.

You can use your reviews for social media posts by sharing a review screenshot, a small snippet from the review, or a quote that draws attention to a specific service. Copy a glowing review and turn it into a Twitter or Facebook post.

The right quote from a review can also add a dash of authenticity to your email and boost its value as a piece of marketing.

Customer reviews are essential resources. They show what you do well, where you need to improve and what you should do differently. When you gather reviews in one place, you can learn things about your business you’d never discover otherwise.

They can be used to develop a better customer experience, by measuring what people think and by showing what needs improvement. How will you make your customers’ opinions work for you?