How influenced are you by online reviews? More importantly, how influenced are your customers? It might be stronger than you think! A new report by Trustpilot suggests that 89% of UK consumers are influenced by negative reviews and 78% are deterred from making a purchase altogether!
How businesses respond to negative reviews is the critical thing here. Apparently 15% of customers say they are more likely to do business with a company after reading a response to a negative review that was resolved.
However, if there’s more than one negative review, then it gets even worse. On average it takes three to four online negative reviews before 38% of consumers stop purchasing altogether. In other words, if you don’t solve the problems that customers have, then you’ll pay the price!
It’s not all bad news! 62% say that they’re more likely to do business with a company after reading a positive review and one in five spend at least 10% cent more! 16-24 year olds are even more influenced by online reviews, with 44% saying they would spend at least 25% more money with a business that they’ve read a positive online review about! Now THAT’S a positive example of ‘word of mouse’!
So, what does this mean for your business? Well, you could say it’s obvious stuff!
- Delight your customers – that means do things that exceed their expectations so much that they want to comment and talk about it!
- Deal with disappointment – spot problems and resolve them…. and let people know you’ve done so!
- Do these things consistently!
The key thing is that to benefit in this more and more transparent world you don’t just need to be doing these things, you need to be seen to be doing them!
