Using Customer Reviews to Your Advantage

Customer reviews, good or bad, are valuable to your business. Customers have the ability to do reviews, so it makes sense to welcome them, as they are going to do it anyway. They use a variety of platforms including Twitter, Facebook and of course Trip Advisor.

Guy Arnold from SalesthroughService.com thinks restaurants and bars should proactively gather customer reviews. “What people are interested in is what others think of your restaurant and service. For example, on Amazon if you order a product, you read the sales blurb but examine the reviews from others before buying it. That’s the buying signal.”

You need to regularly monitor social media and Trip Advisor so you can respond accordingly. For example, a customer may tweet that they enjoyed a fabulous meal at your restaurant last night, so you need to retweet, thank them and ‘like’ it. On Trip Advisor, make sure you add pictures to your listing, keep it up to date and include descriptions in one or two languages.

How can you encourage customers to provide reviews?

Arnold advises getting to know customers and listen to what they say. “Encourage them to tell you first if there’s a problem rather than post something on Trip Advisor.”

You could also include a couple of sentences on your menu along the lines of “Enjoy your experience? Then share it online” and include details of social media platforms. Sam Slipper who runs Brontes café in Cobham, Surrey, which opened last November, says she sometimes asks customers to leave reviews on Trip Advisor. You could even incorporate reviews online as a part of your customer loyalty scheme.

There’s no Such thing as a Bad Customer Review

According to Arnold, there’s no such thing as a bad review. “People judge your restaurant on how you respond to customer reviews. If you respond well, say you didn’t realise there was a problem and how you rectified it, which will serve you well. Consumers are more interested in negative reviews than positive ones. With Trip Advisor, the negative reviews are viewed more frequently than positive ones. A constructive response to a negative review is better than a good review. If restaurants can gather reviews, it will boost business.”

Sam Slipper has had reviews on Trip Advisor since it opened last November. She says the reviews have been “mixed”. “Mostly people only bother to post if it’s negative which are generally personal preferences and not actually bad experiences. With negative reviews, we try to respond appropriately. The challenge is to make sure the customer experience is worth writing something good about!”

How should you use your customer reviews? Arnold recommends posting both good and bad reviews on your website. “Reviews are a phenomenal free PR tool. If you only publish good reviews these are testimonials. You need to publish bad ones as well and how you responded to the bad review. Use the reviews for what I call ‘going the extra mile process’. On a regular basis, find some tiny thing you improve as a result of a review and tell customers about it.”

By Jackie Mitchell