How Businesses Treat Reviews and Online Feedback

One of the biggest changes that have been seen in the world of business is associated with the rise of the internet because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing people to post reviews about various brands and products that other consumers can check out. This is a powerful tool that helps people understand what a particular company can offer to them, and paying attention to reviews is important for said brands.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Best SEO Companies has surveyed around 500 or so people that work in the PR and review data management industry. This survey reveals the manner in which various brands and companies might react to reviews and how they would handle them. Positive reviews are always welcome, but some brands often don’t know how to deal with negative reviews and they often react in a manner that is somewhat defensive.

One thing that can be noted after checking out the responses that this survey got is that many businesses feel like they don’t have time to stay up to date in that regard. Approximately 29% of all the businesses that were a part of this study said that they lacked the spare time to respond to reviews. However, things might be a little different as far as micro-businesses are concerned because their problems tend to have more to do with not having standard procedures put in place.

Creating a process that all employees will follow whenever a review is given can be a huge hurdle due to the reason that it might make it difficult for said employees to know what to do. Micro businesses operate on a much smaller scale than their macro counterparts so suffice it to say that lack of time is not really much of an issue here. 43% of these smaller enterprises claimed that not having a procedure limited their ability to respond to reviews in an effective enough manner and that is something that most definitely needs to change.

A tip that can be obtained from this data has to do with negative review responses. Around 61% of the time, various businesses were able to change a review from a negative to a positive by doing something as simple as offering a refund. Most consumers that leave a bad review simply want an acknowledgment that would indicate that the brand they have reviewed takes their feedback seriously. Refunds are great in this regard and they most often help improve the overall rating that a brand would be capable of showing to potential customers.

Another thing that we would like to point out is that there is a distinct lack of awareness among various brands regarding the impact that reviews can have on their overall SEO potential. A bad review can make SEO difficult to maintain, since it would lower the brand in search engine result page rankings. Around a third of brands don’t know that this is the case which often results in them failing to keep their business above water which is easy enough to change if they are educated about why it matters.

A third of brands also tend to focus on Google when they are searching for reviews regarding their brand. 22% also pay attention to Facebook reviews, with LinkedIn, Yelp and Instagram following with 13%, 12% and 11% respectively. This indicates a gap between where brands search for reviews and where they solicit them since 18% of brands ask for reviews on social media, although this is the sort of thing that can also impact reviews that are left on Google with all things having been considered and taken into account.

There is also a strange trend that larger companies search for reviews less often than smaller ones. Companies with 50 to 250 employees tend to search for reviews at least once a month, but companies that are larger than that don’t care as much about reviews with 47% choosing to search for them annually or less. That might be because larger companies feel that negative reviews will have less of an impact on their profitability even though this is not the case at all if statistics are taken into account.
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