Have you ever heard the phrase, “the customer is always right”? While the satisfaction of your patrons is essential to the success of any company, you now have the opportunity to read and write reviews on your own customers. This new trend helps businesses fight back against the defamatory remarks from customers and spammers, alike. To enhance your business’s reputation, just make sure you are using this new tool properly.
How Review Websites Have Changed The Business World
In 2004, Yelp became a tool for consumers to pass business reviews. It was created with the intention of helping potential customers choose which was the best company, or companies, to patronize based on other people’s experiences. Since this time, Yelp (and countless other review sites) have become an invaluable resource for consumers and business owners alike. However, it has also, unfortunately, started to serve as a forum for legitimate businesses to lose significant credibility.
Today, anyone can review your business online with relative anonymity, regardless of whether they have personal experience with your company or not. This gives spammers, disgruntled customers, and attention seekers the ability to destroy a company’s reputation without any grounds, all while hiding behind a computer screen. As a result, countless companies have had to spend significant sums cleaning up their online reputation after such an attack.
The Pros and Cons of Reviewing Customers
In an effort to fight back against internet trolls and anonymous or illegitimate posters, businesses have created a means of reviewing customers. The benefits of this arrangement are fourfold and include the ability to:
- Check a client’s reputation before signing a contract with them;
- Negate a negative review of your business;
- Warn other businesses about unreliable customers; and
- Garner honest customer reviews (customers are more likely to leave legitimate feedback if they know they can be reviewed, too).
Things to Avoid
While “reverse review” websites have provided opportunity to fight back, be sure to avoid the following when writing customer reviews:
- No use of it as a retaliation for a negative review;
- Do not defame clients, use unprofessional language, or attack customers personally;
- Do not continue to review customers if it is deterring others from patronizing your business.
The Golden Rule
Since the introduction of online review sites, anonymous customers have defamed businesses across the nation. This understandably can be discouraging for new business owners who may have done nothing wrong to begin with, not to mention the financial investment required to repair the damage done to their reputation. Now, companies have the ability to read and write reviews on customers. Essentially, it is a good policy to follow the golden rule, and review others as you yourself would like to be reviewed.
Doing this will, in the end, help your own, and other businesses know who they are dealing with. It may perhaps even saving them time, effort and money by having the information they wouldn’t otherwise have in regards to a great customer or a particular picky one.
Online reputation works both ways. Having your own reputation is vital, though reputing customers can also be a necessary step on the path to success. Helping other businesses can be an act of good fortune and therefore, have you reap what you sow later on down the line.
For more information on online reputation management, please contact us at Web Content Development, today.
