How to Respond to Good and Bad Google Reviews

Tips for responding to customer reviews on Google as the owner.

Your online reputation greatly impacts how users make decisions about your business– from showing up at your doorstep, to picking up the phone to call you, to buying your products on your website. Online reviews provide useful customer service feedback for your business, and responding to customer reviews builds your customers’ trust.

Not only are Google reviews beneficial to customers, potential customers, and business owners, but they are also a powerful tool for local search engine optimization (SEO). If you have numerous Google reviews, then your local search ranking in Google search results could improve tremendously.

Follow the guidelines below for dealing with both unhappy and happy customers on Google as a local business owner.

1. Show appreciation and gratitude.
Google My Business allows customers to leave reviews and business owners to respond to them, both of which are visible in search results. It goes a long way to show customers and potential customers that you take time out of your busy day to respond to Google reviews. It’s crucial to give thanks and engage with those who do give feedback, whether they are good or bad reviews.

Remember that people understand you cannot be 100% perfect all the time, so getting a negative review is NOT the end of the world. It humanizes your brand. The best way to handle a negative review is to respond politely and take the unhappy customer offline by asking them to give you a call.

2. Be thorough, yet concise.
Keep your responses short and sweet without sounding robotic. It’s easy to overwhelm users with lengthy responses. It’s also tempting to re-use answers and say the same thing in every response. Online reviews, in a way, are free ad space so take advantage of it, but don’t go over the top with it.

If a happy customer mentions something they love, dive into the topic in a tasteful way. If a customer left a bad review, spend some more time empathizing and finding a resolution, even if that means taking it offline.

3. Respond as fast as possible.
Don’t take your time to respond to Google reviews, especially from unhappy customers. Customers, and potential customers, respect businesses who own up to mistakes and go out of their way to resolve situations. It’s important to respond in a timely manner, even for positive reviews.

4. Monitor reviews on a regular basis.
Managing your online reputation can help with both damage control and quality control at the same time. According to Moz’s 2019 Industry Report, 60% of companies lack an in-depth review management strategy that involves acquiring, monitoring, and responding to reviews. It’s an important strategy to consider investing in for 2019.

Start Managing Your Google Reviews

Since online reviews have such a huge impact on local search rankings and obviously affect conversion rates, more companies and business owners need to pay more attention to their customer reviews. The dbaPlatform is a tool that can make this process easier for you and your team. It enables you to manage reviews in one single dashboard. You can get alerts for new reviews and quickly respond to any reviews or comments.

Schedule a demo of the review management platform to learn more about how it can help you manage reviews and respond to Google reviews.