We have spoken about the importance of reviews for your business and the fact that getting a large number of reviews helps your online reputation as well as search engine optimisation. More reviews equals more traffic.
Where do your staff come in? How do you share the results of reviews with your staff? These questions are valid and I will discuss best pratice from my perspective.
I have spoken before about the impact of negative reviews. I know of several businesses that use negative reviews as a tool to discipline staff. My recommendation is that you do not use a bad review to crack the whip with your team. There are always detractors. The may be your competition or they could be professional whingers. Some negative reviews are customers who want to be heard when they have had a less than perfect experience.
Your staff are an important part of the review process. They can proactively ask customers to leave reviews and when this works, your review numbers will increase significantly.
Remember, the key is to get more reviews for the business. Yes, some may be less than perfect but if you are building your number of reviews, you are achieving a better online reputation. Using reviews as a tool to discipline staff will make them stop encouraging reviews from your customers.
Make sure you balance the feedback to staff with the good and the bad. Use real examples from reviews as a learning aid to change the way you do business and involve staff in the learning experience and guide them. Don’t use negative reviews as a hammer to smack staff, instead use them as a guide to how to do better next time. Positive reviews are great staff motivators. Glowing comments from customers should be shared with staff. Disperse the negative comments amongst the positive ones to maintain. staff motivation.
If a review mentions one staff member in particular, take them aside and discuss the contents in private. Ask the question, “Why do you think they wrote this?” and “How do we do better next time.” Keep in mind, it could be a vexatious review so we don’t want to demotivate the staff member, instead guide them to learn from the feedback.
Celebrate the number of reviews and make sure that your staff are happy to encourage customers to leave reviews. That is the most important goal. Set a target, say 100 reviews on Google to start and incentivise the staff to reach that goal. Make sure they know that you are happy when the review numbers are coming in and your business will grow.
The sandwich approach works well too. Mention two or three glowing reviews, then discuss a bad review and finish with a couple more good ones and reinforce that getting reviews is the goal.