10.26.2010

Your Customers Are Talking. Listen.

Your customers are talking about you, your business and the products or services you provide. Years ago it was nearly impossible to know who was saying what about your business. You could only listen to the customers who went out of their way to fill out a survey, reached out to you by phone or met you face to face. The world has changed. We're all online. Here's a quick primer on how to navigate the untamed world of customer reviews onlin

How to find what customers are saying about you 

You can start listening to what your customers are saying about your business online by registering for a free Google account and setting up alerts for mentions of you, your business and even your closest competition. Whenever Google discovers a mention of one of the key words or phrases you asked it to track, you'll get an e-mail with a link to the mention. Yelp.com, Insiderpages.com, and Citysearch.com are additional places you’ll want to check regularly for reviews. Most allow you to sign up as a business owner so you can keep your business profile up-to-date.

When to respond

Positive remarks about your business are easy to respond to correctly. It makes perfect sense to say hello, express your joy that they've found some use in what you offer and move on. What about the negative comments though? Is there a right or wrong time for responses to an unsatisfied customer?

In a perfect world, you'd catch unsatisfied customers immediately. But in the world we share, unhappy customers walk away without a word and give no sign of their displeasure until the alert shows up in your e-mail inbox that somebody has said your business is terrible.

How to respond—Five Quick Tips

1. A timely response is the best defense against a viral outcry against your business online. The more time you give unhappy customers to stew in their regrets, the more difficult it will be to regain their favor. A quick response saying, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience. That is unacceptable and we’d like to make things right!” is a great first step and publicly shows how much you want to make things right.

2. Before you respond, make sure you're not responding in anger and put on your humble hat. It's understandable that you'd be frustrated with somebody calling your baby ugly—just don't let that frustration get the best of you in your response!

3. If the customer's story is accurate, apologize and seek to make things right immediately. If the customer's review is inaccurate, apologize, offer to make things right and state simply that you remember things a little differently and would love a chance to do things over.

4. Whenever possible, move a customer service interaction to private e-mail, a phone call or even face to face. Review sites, Twitter and Facebook rarely offer enough space to give full voice to context and the explanations that satisfy everyone involved.

5. Before you respond to a complaint online, always check to see if the person complaining has a history of tearing into businesses. Some people will never be satisfied and you’ll quickly learn to spot these types a digital mile off. When in doubt, offer a sincere apology and express your hope that you’ll get another chance.

Once you've made things right, a natural response will be for the previously unhappy customer to return to their review and let others know. If that doesn't happen, don't fret about it. You have other customers to make happy! Move on and figure out a way to do better next time. You can’t make everybody happy but with the power of digital, you can quickly figure out how to please a much higher percentage!

A note about authenticity:

At some point you're going to be tempted to respond anonymously to a customer complaint or perhaps leave a few glowing reviews of your business. Don't give in to the temptation! Remember that the best defense is a great offense—in this case that offense is an active community of people who support your business.