Online reviews are a great way to get a hospitality business noticed but many businesses have a love-hate relationship with them. On one hand a positive review can show a customer which company to choose and trust. On the other hand, a bad review can defer customers away and hurt a companies credibility. Customers read reviews because it gives them an unbiased opinion on which company they should use. With a good review score and plenty of opinions, a customer may be more inclined to try your business.
The Effect of Positive and Negative Reviews
Getting a good review will feel like a great accomplishment and a pat on the back for many businesses. Whereas getting those bad reviews can feel dreadful. Receiving a bad review needs to be perceived as feedback, it's not necessarily a bad thing but instead somewhere a business can improve. When receiving a review, a business should take a moment of self reflection, take the criticism on board and find ways to improve their business.
"Over 90% of customers will actively seek out reviews to determine the quality and get a feeling for the experiences offered by a local business."
A business with only good reviews doesn't give the customer much of an opinion, with reviews less than 5 stars the customer gets to see the pros and cons of the business. To a customer, reviews are like a recommendation from a friend and customers are less likely to use a business with 4 star reviews than 5 star.
The Importance of Responding to Negative Reviews
Disgruntled customers will appear and bad reviews will happen but instead of brushing them off, a business needs to know how to respond to them. When receiving a bad review the first step is to stay calm, don't stress, never delete a review and remember you don't win over a customer by yelling at them. Instead of rushing a thoughtless response, take a minute to thoroughly read the review and understand how the customer must have been feeling. The customer has paid for a service that hasn't delivered to the potential they expected. Giving a response to a bad review lets the customer know you're empathetic about their experience and you want to improve. When it comes to responding to reviews, a business needs to respond quickly as it allows the customer to know they're monitoring reviews and they care for customer's opinions. Sometimes it's best to invite the customer to talk privately, keep your response short and sweet and don't make excuses for the bad service the customer may have received.
How to Improve Your Business Following Negative Reviews
Reviews aren't just valuable information for the customer reading them; they can be equally as valuable to the business. When a business receives a bad review the main focus should be how to improve in the future and ensure those bad reviews don't appear again. Getting a bad review can expose gaps in a business's customer experience that they weren't aware of. Make sure not to gloss over the areas of improvement mentioned within a review, many reviews may say "They had the most amazing pasta ever and the staff were brilliant, but the service was slow". While it's nice to praise a business on it's food and staff, they need to ensure they work on the speed of their service too. Receiving reviews like the one above also gives insight on product opinions. Reviewing doesn't just provide gaps within service but also shows which products are working, which are not, and which products just need slight tweaks.
How to Acquire More Positive Reviews
Customers want to be able to read reviews from old to new, with recent reviews still appearing. Having a mixture of old and new reviews provides the customer with information on how the business has changed, has it gone downhill or is it improving? However, customers who have had a good experience are less inclined to leave a review so how does a business acquire reviews from the customer with nothing negative to say? With the SPARK terminal, businesses have the option to add an after service review on dual screens. A customer can watch their order go through then after payment they are given the option to review the service by a simple emoji. Customers that enjoyed their experience but don't have much to stay could simply choose the emoji whereas customers that may have something they want improving could choose their emoji and add a little note.
Online reviews are incredibly important so don't be afraid of the negative ones. Embrace the critique! Get your hospitality business on social media and review sites to give your customers the opportunity to let you know how to improve and enhance your business. By doing this you also allow customers the chance to voice their opinion and recommend your business. When your business does get negative reviews, learn how to respond in an understanding manner and you'll have the chance to bring back a customer you'd have otherwise lost.