Online reviews are commonplace, from company sites to social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Unmonitored reviews from customers may have been a fear of companies in the past, but today they must be embraced. A recent eMarketer interview with Denise Zimmerman of NetPlus Marketing, Inc. highlights tactics for addressing any less-than-stellar reviews that might surface about your company.
"Reviews were positive for the business. If you had a good product and you were a good company, the positive reviews far outweighed the negative ones. You also got valuable feedback about potential issues or problems with a product that you might not have gotten before. But the challenge for retailers was, what do you then do about it? And a lot of this is relevant to the larger social media picture." - Zimmerman
She says you have three options:
- Ignore it.
- Respond.
- Take it down.
Sure, one and three may seem a bit "anti-social," but they are clear options, and there are times when they are very appropriate. Companies should determine whether or not the review stemmed from an isolated event, or was potentially submitted by a "trouble maker." Based on this analysis, they can proceed with the best response.
Read the full interview here.
