e measure and measure and have countless ways to analyze data. But why is the evaluation of customer reviews still underestimated? And that, even though reviews can have an enormous impact on your company’s success. After all, over 90% of customers read product reviews before making a purchase decision. These reviews are the fastest and easiest way to find out what quality the desired services or products have.
That’s why your company should always show a high level of customer satisfaction on all relevant review platforms. This builds trust among your (potential) customers and thereby increases your conversion rate. What’s more: the better the ratings and comments your company (or service/product) generates, the higher it will be listed on the respective platform.
You still don’t know which platforms you should be present on? And are you still looking for the right tools and software to drive your review management forward and be able to respond quickly to reviews? In this article, we introduce the most important platforms and you’ll learn which factors matter when choosing the right review management tool.
Do you want to attract attention for your company? Then you should be present on as many platforms as possible and keep a close eye on your respective presence there. Here are five of the most important:
Google is by far the most important platform when it comes to review management. The reviews are located on Google’s location platform “My Business”, which covers all industries.
Important: This includes not only direct Google Reviews, but also reviews from independent platforms such as Trustpilot, Trusted Shops, Augezeichnet.org or Reputation.com.
With around 40,000 newly published reviews every day, Trustpilot is one of the largest and fastest-growing review portals.
All customer reviews for a company can be submitted on its profile page, where they are then displayed to other users. There is also an overall rating in the form of a TrustScore and a star rating.
On Yelp, users rate local shops, businesses, products, and services (such as restaurants, cafés, hotels, or other establishments). With good ratings, you can quickly appear very high up here—especially if the business is location-dependent and the search query includes that location.
Good to know: For every new star a business receives on Yelp, revenue increases by up to 9%.
On average, just under 7,400 products are sold per minute on the largest e-commerce platform; however, only between 1.5% and 15% of them are reviewed (depending on the company). Especially if you rely only on Amazon’s own reminder emails and don’t take action yourself, the review rate remains lower.
The more reviews, the better. To encourage this, the process should be designed to be as simple as possible. If it’s too time-consuming or complicated to leave a review, the customer probably won’t do it.
The shortest path to more reviews? Just ask. This can be done quite easily, for example, with automated follow-up emails after a recent purchase or an interaction with your customer service. A customer service software solution is a good fit here, allowing you to set up such an automated message that is sent to your customer at a specific time.
In general, customer service software simplifies the management, organization, and answering of customer inquiries. This enables you to provide seamless, cross-channel customer service that improves the customer experience. Because customers are generally more likely to leave a (positive) review when you provide really good service and everything runs smoothly.
Tip: Even an originally negative review can be turned into a positive buying experience with the right customer service. That’s why it’s very important how your company deals with the reviews it receives.
So many online shops, review platforms, consumer platforms and portals exist these days. It’s easy to lose track – both of all your online reviews and of the platforms that are truly relevant for your company.
To drive your review management forward and be able to respond to reviews quickly, a review monitoring tool is essential. It makes your work easier and not only clearer, but also more convenient and efficient. With it, you have all online reviews, questions and customer opinions directly in view and, ideally, you can reply to all your reviews straight from within the tool.
Furthermore, you can use a review monitoring tool to make more structured use of all your customer feedback, generating better consumer insights and using them to optimise your products and services. Some tools also offer consultation calls in advance to identify your most relevant platforms, as well as social listening and monitoring functions. In addition, some tools allow you to compare your company directly with your market competitors and use your reviews for social media or your website.
Tip: In principle, it’s important that you respond to your reviews, as this strengthens trust in you. The new content from reviews and replies to comments also has a positive SEO effect and helps you rank higher in search engine results through certain keywords.
Overview
You can see all reviews, questions or opinions and which platforms you are being reviewed on.
Efficiency
You can manage everything centrally in one place.
Speed
You can respond much faster to (negative) reviews.
Comparison
You can see how your competition is performing.
To make your search easier, you should use the following criteria as a guide during your research:
Focus
Which platforms’ reviews are included, and can all platforms relevant to you be monitored?
Range of functions
Are all the important basic functions available? Can you respond to reviews directly from within the tool? Is it possible to easily share reviews on social media or on your website? Can you benchmark yourself against competitors? Are there integrations with other tools?
How it works
How is the user experience and user interface? Is the interface designed intuitively?
Price
How are the costs structured depending on the number of users and the scope of features?
Support
Is there an option for support and/or a dedicated contact person? Is there an option for a consultation in advance to evaluate the most relevant platforms for you?
Tip: Use the trial periods that review management tools typically offer to find the right tool for you.
How you handle your online reviews is crucial to your company’s success. That’s why you should always keep an eye on all reviews across the platforms relevant to you and respond immediately to negative reviews.
If there are no or only few reviews of your company, product, or service yet, customer service software can help increase your customers’ willingness to leave a review and improve the customer experience.
For proper monitoring and management of your reviews, you then need a review monitoring tool that fits your needs. When choosing one, an extended trial period helps, involving all team members who will be working with the tool. Our checklist also provides good guidance when deciding between several solutions.
Good luck!
Are you convinced that review management can improve your marketing? And are you therefore looking for a suitable review management tool? Use the know-how from our in-depth market research on review management and start matching with the most relevant providers for you—non-binding and free of charge!
Simply use our Match Assistant and we’ll take care of the rest for you! Just a few minutes of your time to get significantly closer to your new review management tool.
Till Zier is CPO at Matchilla and, as a MarTech expert, reports in MatchZINE on news and trends in marketing, automation, analytics, and data.
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