As a business, you have few online allies more powerful than customer-written reviews.

You could say people trust reviews—but that wouldn’t even be the half of it.

BrightLocal’s 2014 Local Customer Review Survey of over 2,000 consumers revealed some critical and compelling data:

• 88% of respondents read/used reviews to determine the quality of a local business; an overwhelming majority of respondents, 93%, said they checked reviews before dining or shopping. This means no matter how good your website is, or how compelling your offering, your customers will seek out other opinions. Having a strategy to earn, manage, and respond to reviews is a must.
• 85% of respondents to the BrightLocal survey read up to 10 different reviews while researching their purchase, pointing to the fact that customers aren’t blindly accepting the first review they read, but triangulating the feedback they find to get the real story behind a business. (That ought to be encouraging for businesses, as it means one terrible review is unlikely to sink you. But shoppers do weigh reviews heavily.)
• 88% of respondents said they trusted online reviews as much as they’d trust a personal recommendation (overwhelmingly the most trusted form of advertising by consumers, according to Nielsen’s Trust in Advertising Report), though the caveat is reviews had to be authentic, and there had to be enough of them to make a judgement call.

One thing that’s no longer up for debate is that reviews can have an enormous impact on your business and your bottom line.

Whether it will be a positive or negative impact, is largely up to you.

In this post, we’ll share some tips on getting more reviews as well as when and how to respond to the reviews you get.

How you can get customers to leave more reviews

This is the golden question for any local business: Since reviews are so powerful, how can I get more customers to leave them?

The most important thing is also the most obvious: Ask for them.

Prime a customer to review you at the beginning of your relationship

Let customers know their feedback is welcome and expected. For example, if you’re a contractor, include this in the description of your process, or tell the customer on the phone that you’d love to earn a referral.

Remind the customer to review you at the end of the transaction

For a coffee shop, this might be a reminder on the receipt. For an ecommerce retailer, perhaps it’s a slip of paper included in the shipment with a reminder or incentive to review, provided that's within the rules of the site.

How this looks will depend on how you do business, but be explicit in your ask.

Identify the most important sites in your niche (and where you’re already being reviewed). There are a myriad of reviews sites out there, and trying to manage them all is nearly impossible. Do a quick bit of research to find out which sites are the most influential in your niche.

A quick “[brand name] + reviews” search in Google will reveal where people are already talking about your business or product. It may be easieer to encourage more activity from an existing source than to ask people to review information on your site.

You want to make it as easy as possible for people to review you, so focus on the platforms your customers arealready using.

Make sure you know the rules of engagement for each review platform

Different sites have different rules when it comes to how and where you can ask for reviews.

For example, Yelp expressly forbids asking or incentivizing customer reviews, but if you’re trying to get reviews on your own website, no such rules apply.

Google has no problem with you asking customers to review you, but they’ll discount reviews filled out on an in-store kiosk or computer (too many reviews from the same IP).

Be patient and timely

Even if you implement a great review-capturing process, it’ll take a while before you’ve built up a solid body of feedback. Don’t get discouraged. Sustain your effort and keep on plugging away. Asking for a review weeks or even months after a transaction is a poor strategy. You want to develop a system that reminds people you’d love their feedback as quickly as possible.

Worthwhile tactics for getting more reviews

Put up signs at your business location

Yes, it’s a bit passive, but putting up the “People Love Us on Yelp!” signs, or your own, homemade handouts for reviewing on Google (or whatever platform you choose) are great on-location reminders that feedback matters.

Incentivize check-ins

While you can’t incentivize reviews for most platforms, there are no rules against incentivizing people to check into your location on apps like Yelp. The bonus here is once they’ve checked in, you can capture that information and remind them you’d love their feedback.

Showcase the reviews you have

Printing and displaying reviews is a powerful way to show people that you take them seriously. That could mean displaying reviews in-store. (Cheesy as it sounds, bathroom stalls are a great place for this, as the person will be naturally looking for something to read.)

On your website, call out review sections. Show reviewers' faces as a way of proving that the reviews were left by real people—and that their feedback is making a difference.

Use remarketing campaigns

If you run an ecommerce site, you can use AdWords to retarget anyone who makes a purchase from your website with a polite request for a review.

Simply drop the cookie on the last page of your conversion funnel (usually the thank you page), embed it in their digital invoice, create a splash page offering previous buyers an exclusive deal, or add the cookie to an online feedback form.

What will happen if your business gets a bad review?

This is the classic fear of companies who hold out on getting involved in customer reviews, and where the reality of today’s communication really comes to light. The truth is, your business has little control over whether or not people will talk about your brand. Your only choices are to engage with or ignore people when they do talk about your brand.

Whether it’s Yelp, TripAdvisor or Google My Business, reviews about your business or product are likely already online. They’re being shared in formal environments like review sites and in informal environments like social media platforms and discussion forums.

If you remain silent, only one perspective will be being shared: the reviewer’s.

Worse, a failure to respond now makes you look apathetic about your own reputation and your customers’ concerns. In this way, the hands of businesses have already been forced.

If you’re most worried that someone might say something nasty to you online, your defence is two-pronged:

1. Learn from the feedback and improve your business so future complaints will be mitigated
2. Work to generate positive contributions to the review ecosystem

Yes, there’s a chance your business may become the target of trolls or someone who is simply angry at the world. However, research conducted by MIT and Northwestern reveals that a brand's most devoted customers are typically the ones who vent most often about their negative experiences.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore bad reviews and hope they go away.

Should you always respond to bad reviews?

First, acknowledge that silence is almost never a smart response to a bad review. Perhaps the most poignant incentive to engage with reviewers comes from Bazaarvoice’s research, which shows that:

• Leads who see a brand respond to a negative review reported an increase of 116% in purchase intent
• 71% of customers changed their perception of the brand after seeing a public response to a reviewer
• Shoppers who saw a brand response offering a refund, upgrade, or exchange to a disgruntled customer were 92% more likely to purchase than those who saw no response
• Reviews with company responses were much more likely to be voted as “helpful” by readers

Customers want to see that your brand cares about their concerns, and is actively engaged with them in ways that demonstrate that your concerns goes beyond protecting your own reputation.

Lisa Barone, a well-respected digital strategist, wrote a post that recommends always responding to a negative review if one of the following statements is true:

You really did screw up

If a complaint is legitimate, you owe it to the customer to acknowledge and respond to their frustration.

The reviewer is misstating the facts

If the event in question never actually happened, or if the facts have been invented by the reviewer, it’s time to step in and (politely) set the record straight, sharing whatever substantiated proof you have. You need to share your side of the story and give context to new readers.

The situation can be salvaged

If there’s a simply way to fix the problem or resolve the customer compliant, get in there and do it. It doesn’t matter who is in error, communicate openly and make a good attempt to right the perceived wrong. This is a chance to win back your customer.

The conversation is getting louder

If the story is spreading and the troops are rallying, it’s time to step in and put out the fire. If someone well-connected has a gripe about your business, remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

You should consider holding off a response if…

You’re still angry about it

Nothing good will come from a snarky, sarcastic, or overly pointed response. Take a breather, think through the issue, and come back prepared to be polite and act like the bigger person.

The reviewer is angry at the world, not your business

Never feed the trolls. If you’re going through a person’s profile and all you see are bad reviews, it’s probably not worth it to reply to them unless they’re providing inaccurate information that taints your reputation. When in doubt, simply respond with the facts.

How to respond to a bad review (5-step plan)

A bad review can feel like a punch to the gut. Here’s how to handle the situation with tact and get the best possible outcome as often as possible in just five steps:

Step 1. Cool down

Be sure you’re in the right frame of mind to reply. Getting angry, defensive, or sarcastic will do more harm than good.

Step 2. Acknowledge and look into the problem

Ask your staff or anyone who was involved in the situation what actually happened. Gather the facts you need to determine whether or not this is a situation where the brand screwed up, the customer screwed up, or a bit of both. You want to be fully aware of what’s actually happened when you respond to a bad review.

No matter what, give the customer the benefit of the doubt. The knee-jerk response is to defend yourself. But remember, this is a chance to salvage a customer relationship and look great doing it! Don’t blow it by coming across as defensive.

Step 3. Address the problem directly

Did your business screw up? Apologize and make things right.

What if your business was not in the wrong? Apologize anyway, and explain the situation. Let the customer know what you’ve done, will do, or are doing to solve the problem for them. Let them know their concern is being addressed by a real, live person. Most importantly, make them feel like you understand their concern and and empathize with them.

Note: A “non-apology” won’t work here. You can’t pump your company’s tires, and then apologize for not coming through. Always be sincere, direct, and polite.

Step 4. Take the conversation offline after your first response

This is especially important on social media. Once you’ve acknowledged the issue and offered to help, do whatever you can to draw the conversation away from the public eye. You want to show you’re proactively responding. However, the nitty-gritty details don’t need to be shared with the general public.

Be upfront with the customer, and invite them to contact you directly to receive a resolution to their problem.

Note: Be certain that the channels you provide are prompt, personal, and effective. Otherwise, you'll risk making them feel like you’re simply passing the buck.

Step 5. Document the complaint and watch for patterns

Your process shouldn’t end once the problem is solved or the customer checks out. Document the details of the complain. As for future complains, keep details records about when people are complaining, and what they’re complaining about.

You can learn a great deal from negative reviews, including how to improve your business and make your customers happier. Bad reviews are actually one of the best ways of identifying and solving systemic business problems.

Should you also respond to positive reviews?

You should respond to positive reviews, depending on the norms of the platform you’re receiving the reviews on. Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are forums for conversation where a response is expected, and people won’t be surprised to see a brand engaging with every single review on either one.

On TripAdvisor, responses from business owners are both welcomed and encouraged.

On Yelp, however, the culture of the site is a bit sarcastic, so the community might sneer at seeing constant one-to-one communication between reviewers and brands. On platforms like this, you might choose to respond to reviews privately. That said, in the right context, responding to a positive review with a thoughtful reply will make a happy customer even happier, and demonstrate to other potential buyers that your brand is listening.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of reviews

If nothing else, I hope this post has opened your eyes to the need to develop a strategy for responding to online reviews. When managed well, reviews can be a huge business generator, as well as key indicators of areas your business is succeeding in and areas where improvement is needed.

While it can be a bit scary when getting started, with careful planning and oversight, local businesses can reap huge rewards from online reviews.

Your brand should be one of those businesses.