When your growing business is starting to take off and you’re pleased with your revenue but not your reviews, you need to act quickly and decisively. Here are four reasons why your business may be receiving poor reviews, and some ways you can remedy the problem head-on:
You’re not utilizing information about your customers to enhance their experience
Your business may not be taking advantage of important in-house data to measure and define success. While a business’ revenue is a good gauge for performance, it isn’t always the best metric for how it will perform in the future. Despite good sales numbers and despite having a lot of available information about your customers, you may find yourself confronted with a serious question: Why is your company receiving poor reviews?
Some initial answers to this predicament may be available in your company’s customer relationship management software. CRM data can impart valuable insight about how your staff is interacting with customers and whether there are any obstacles to developing consistent and positive results. You can strategically analyze this type of data to improve future interactions. Use information about your customers’ purchase or service history in a way that can help you shape better customer experiences and foster positive and personalized ongoing relationships.
New customers wait too long to receive products or services
When people are dealing with your business for the first time, they want a quick turn-around to get a product or service. If you aren’t fulfilling orders or dispatching service in a timely manner, your reviews are going to suffer.
Using better time management skills can help you to improve your business’ efficiency. You may also consider increasing the size of your workforce.
Staff aren’t being responsive to existing customers
When existing customers need help with a product or service that they’ve already paid for, they expect you to respond within a reasonable time. If you keep them waiting too long, they’ll be more likely to give you negative reviews; even worse, they may give up on you altogether and attempt to dissuade other prospective customers from doing business with you.
It’s imperative that you let customers know that you value their business by responding quickly when they reach out. Even if you can’t provide the help that they’ve requested right away, at a minimum, you need to touch base to acknowledge their requests and let them know that you’re going to resolve any problems as soon as you can.
Your team Is failing to make the right impression
Your frontline team members such as salespersons, customer service representatives, and service will play a strong part in defining your customers’ experience. If they don’t have a strong command of your company’s products or services, your customers won’t feel good about doing business with you. It’s essential for your team to project knowledge, competence, and resourcefulness. Moreover, they need to be pleasant and friendly. Even when people are happy with your business’ products or services, unpleasant interactions will undoubtedly hurt your business’ reviews.
The first step in tackling these potential problems is evaluating your hiring practices. You need to bring on applicants who have the experience and qualities that are fundamental to succeeding in the roles that they’re applying for. Next, you need to reexamine your training protocols. A well trained staff is more likely to perform well and fully understand individual job responsibilities. In addition, you can incorporate initiatives that teach good customer service tactics and help to refine how you’d like for your team to interact with customers. Lastly, you need to establish performance reviews so you can be quick to identify and address areas where your team members need improvement.
Customer reviews are an extremely important barometer about how you’re really doing and how much business you can expect to receive in the future. Draw insight from your data, hire and train your staff carefully, and streamline your operations to generate positive reviews.