How Local Businesses Win: Respond to Reviews

Respond to all reviews.

Provide specific aknowledgments and solutions for each negative review.

• Almost all consumers read reviews.

• Business should respond to reviews. Customers highly value a business that do so.

• Responding to reviews has a measurable impact on future customers, and on average review ratings.

• There is a correct way to respond to reviews - responding correctly to negative reviews in particular can have huge positive impact.

This article explores the importance of online reviews for businesses, emphasizing that customer reviews significantly impact consumer choices and brand perception. It highlights the benefits of responding to reviews, especially negative ones, as it demonstrates a business's commitment to customer satisfaction and service recovery. The data reveals that timely and personalized responses to reviews can improve a business's online ratings and overall reputation, ultimately leading to increased customer trust and purchase intent. Key findings include the impact of review responses on purchase intent, the importance of responding to negative reviews, and the positive correlation between response times and business ratings.

Below are direct quotes from reputable sites, outlining these principles with support from data, collected for your convenience.

Sourced from Podium:

• Reviews are 2x more likely to be an important factor in choosing a local business than loyalty, and 7.4x more likely to be an important factor than traditional marketing.

• Most consumers have read a review in the last week.
  • 23% have read an online review in the last day.
  • 46% have read an online review in the last 3 days.
  • 65% have read an online review in the last week.
  • 85% have read an online review in the last month.
  • 94% have read an online review in the last year.

• 56% of consumers say that a business’s responses to reviews have changed their perspective on the business. Consumers consider how businesses respond to reviews when making purchasing decisions. Business responses offer insight into how responsive, responsible, and caring a business is. Responses tell the consumer how the business is going to treat them.

Sourced from Marketingcharts

• Shoppers who read responses suggesting additional steps (such as contacting customer service) had an 89% higher intent to purchase and an 89% higher product sentiment.

• Compared to the control group, shoppers who saw a review response that contained guidance explanations for product misuse had a 186% higher purchase intent and a 157% higher product sentiment;

• 7 in 10 survey respondents indicated that a brand’s response to an online consumer review changes their perception of a brand, most commonly by making them feel that the brand really cares about customers (41%), that it has great customer service (35%), and that it is trustworthy (22%).

Sourced from Brightlocal

• Business review responses are crucial: 88% of consumers would use a business that replies to all of its reviews, compared to just 47% who would use a business that doesn’t respond to reviews at all.

• 93% of consumers would expect a business to respond to their reviews.

Sourced from Reviewtrackers

• Companies aren’t responding fast enough (or at all) to reviews. 53% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week. 1 in 3 have a shorter time frame of 3 days or less.

• Responsive industry leaders get higher ratings. Faster review response times are closely linked to having a positive reputation.
  • For example, leading automotive brands (companies in the 90th percentile) posted an average response time of 1.04 days compared to the industry average of 8.8 days; unsurprisingly, the former enjoyed a higher 4.31 overall rating — well above the industry average of 3.92 stars out of 5.
  • When it comes to the speed of their responsiveness, the top 10% brands in the hospitality and restaurant industries came in behind automotive leaders as second and third, respectively, with averages of 1.2 and 1.6 days response times and average ratings of 4.32 and 4.19 stars. Contrast this to industry averages of 6.9 days and 5.1 days response times and average ratings of 3.73 stars for both hospitality and restaurant brands.

• The good news: review responses make a real and measurable difference — not just to the consumer who leaves the review, but to everyone else who sees it. In fact, 45% of consumers say they’re more likely to visit a business if it responds to negative reviews.

Sourcde from HBR

• On TripAdvisor, management responses are common: Roughly one-third of reviews receive a response, and nearly half of all hotels respond to reviews. By analyzing these responses, we found that when hotels start responding, they receive 12% more reviews and their ratings increase, on average, by 0.12 stars. While these gains may seem modest, TripAdvisor rounds average ratings to the nearest half star: A hotel with a rating of 4.26 stars will be rounded up to a 4.5, while a hotel with 4.24 stars will be rounded down to a 4. Therefore, even small changes can have a significant impact on consumers’ perceptions. Approximately one-third of the hotels we studied increased their rounded ratings by half a star or more within six months of their first management response.

Sourcde from Sagepub Journals

• Customer evaluations will be more favorable if the online response includes all three of acknowledgment, account, and action, than if it contains just two, one, or none of these elements

• Customer evaluations will be more favorable if the type of acknowledgment, account, and action is specific, and is congruent with the specific complaint, than if it is general and/or poorly matched to the complaint

Sourcde from HBR

• Respond to all negative online reviews.
  • Negative online reviews impact buying decisions and potentially lead to some consumers avoiding some businesses entirely. To reduce the damaging effects of negative online reviews and the potential loss of a significant share of customers, we find that managers should engage in responding to an online review primarily as a complaint management strategy. A manager’s response to a negative online review potentially prevents a subsequent negative review, because a future reviewer can observe prior complaint management interactions for a complaint similar to their own.

• Address a negative online review by providing a tailored solution to the specific complaint.
  • Additionally, managers should customize their response to each negative review to increase the quality of their complaint management. Specifically, managers should communicate actions they have taken to rectify the problem(s) expressed in each negative review. By addressing the reviewer’s issue, the manager can potentially appease an unsatisfied customer and show subsequent reviewers that the firm cares about customer complaints and issues. Thus, an organization can proactively manage service recovery efforts.

• Respond quickly to all negative reviews.
  • Finally, manager responses to negative reviews should be timely, so that a manager’s response is visible to future reviewers. The faster the manager responds to a negative online review, the faster the reviewer is appeased and prospective reviewers can see that the manager and the firm are dedicated to solving customer complaints in a timely fashion.