Cultivating a body of reviews is an important aspect of engaging with your customers on social. It can further establish you as a reputable brand, teach you which areas you could be improving on, boost SEO, start important conversations and more. If you're not getting reviews—or if you're only getting them from one kind of customer (satisfied, dissatisfied, one-time, returning, etc.)—you might be missing out on a lot of useful information.
Melissa Phillips, director of digital operations at industrial staffing firm EmployBridge, found that her brand was mostly getting reviews from applicants who for some reason or another did not complete the placement process, rather than those who were successfully placed on assignment. In the upcoming Social Shake-Up webinar, Social Customer Care That Builds Brand Loyalty, June 21, Phillips will share her story about attempting to boost those numbers and what she learned from the experience. The five best practices she employed:
1. Ask once. Don’t create survey or review fatigue, especially if another arm of your brand engages in satisfaction and quality control checks. You might end up stepping on your own toes.
2. Make it easy to respond. If your ask is in an email, one click from that email should get respondents directly to the page where they need to be. Think "immediate and easy."
3. Respond to everything in 24 hours. Develop a routine to respond to all reviews, good, bad and ugly. Some can be standard responses, some can be more personalized. A blend of both with a disciplined routine gets the job done.
4. Listen and fix the problem. Proactively fix problems you can fix. Find the low-hanging fruit first, and then work your way up the tree.
5. Own it. Honesty, integrity and maturity should be your watchwords. When you make a mistake, own it. Apologize, do your best to fix problems and involve relevant employees in that fix so they feel ownership and responsibility and that they aren't being blamed and/or bypassed.
For more advice about customer care on social from Phillips, as well as Machu Latorre, VP, social care business strategy & innovation at Wells Fargo, and Stacey Sayer, global head of social media at Level 3 Communications, register for the webinar here.
Follow Ian on Twitter: @ianwright0101