5 Tips on Managing your Google Reviews with GMB
When managing a business page with Google My Business, it is essential to know how, why, and when to respond to your customers’ feedback. Here are five tips on managing your Google Reviews using Google My Business.
1. Use the Google My Business app.
With the Google My Business app for iOS and Android, you can track and respond to Google reviews right at your fingertips, quite literally. When you’re on the go, you can opt-in for notifications of new activity on your Google business listing, including reviews. With this useful tool, you will never miss a review again, and you won’t have to worry about it after you respond almost immediately to your reviewer!
2. Respond in a timely manner.
Sometimes it can be time-consuming to check your reviews consistently, but it is still imperative. It is best to respond to customers within 24 hours of their initial review. However, 52% of customers expect a response within seven days. The quicker the response, the more likely the reviewer will stay your customer and the more likely they are to recommend you to someone else. It looks pretty good to potential customers as well.
3. Always respond to your reviewers.
It is always a good idea to respond to your customer reviews, whether they give good feedback or negative feedback. It is important to remember to be polite and not get too personal. If a customer leaves a negative review, take a moment to calm yourself down before responding and avoid a back-and-forth commenting war; this can only hurt your business and unintentionally burn some bridges. Find a way to take the conversation offline, whether it be over the phone or in person.
4. Your response to negative reviews matters.
The most important thing to keep in mind when responding to reviews is how your response may affect your business. As stated above, it is crucial that you do not get into an argument over the internet, so you should assess the situation before you respond to the review. Remember to keep your response fairly general so you are not taking the blame for something that may not have happened, and you’re not pointing blame at your customers.
An excellent example of a response for a review 3-stars or below is, “We appreciate your feedback regarding your experience with My Company Name. May we ask you to please send us a direct message to [email protected] or give us a call at (***) ***-**** so we may work to fix this issue? We look forward to hearing from you so we can make this right.”
5. Some reviews may not even be real.
If you suspect that a review may be fake, whether it be based on a silly username or users not being one of your customers, report it to Google and plead your case to have the review removed. In the meantime, it is still important to treat all reviews as real. You don’t want to call out a “fake” review to find out later that it was real. Respond politely and use language that does not accept blame, or does not blame the customer. Because current and potential customers cannot tell when a review is fake, use all of the tips you have learned to respond to a real negative review. Your company will show that they are willing to listen to customer reviews and, in turn, will be more likely to be thought of positively.
Following these tips will enable your company to successfully manage Google Reviews. Google My Business also offers other ways to optimize your business listing, so be sure to look at all of your options to get the best chance of seeing your business over your competitors.