How do you know that all of your customers are receiving a consistent experience? Are they sharing that experience with their friends and family? As your business grows, it’s increasingly important to ensure that you continue delivering the service that got you to where you are now.

To help you get started, we’ve distilled 4 secrets from our brand promise webinar into this mini video series.

Watch now and learn:

  • Why satisfaction falls short when crafting a brand promise
  • The #1 tool to measure a customer’s emotional connection to your brand
  • Key tactics on how to use feedback to manage your business
  • 4 ways to get happy customers to tell their friends

 

And Why NPS® Adopters Are 2 Steps Ahead

Google recently updated their policies around what’s commonly known as review gating.

Review gating is a process where businesses first find out if a customer’s experience was positive or negative. When businesses only ask those who report having a positive experience to leave a review, this is known as “gating.”

According to one of the key changes in Google’s terms of service, businesses should not “discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.”

Google realizes that consumers use their reviews to make purchasing decisions. They also realize that, in order to continue to be a reliable source, they’ll need to make adjustments to their ecosystem, as we’ve also seen in their recent removal of anonymous reviews.

What does this mean for companies that only ask for reviews from their happiest customers? Right now, with very little info coming from Google, it is unclear. Many businesses are choosing the “wait and see” approach as there haven’t been any reports of companies being penalized for continuing business as usual. Others are taking a more proactive stance and asking all their customers for reviews, regardless of sentiment.

At Listen360, we believe it’s important to look beyond reviews when making decisions about running your business. Negative reviews stem from negative experiences. When great experiences and loyal customers are a priority, stellar reviews follow. This is the essence of the Net Promoter System (NPS®) and is the reason that businesses who’ve adopted the NPS® methodology are two steps ahead.

Businesses that ask for reviews in tandem with NPS® are less likely to be impacted by this Google policy change. Here are a few reasons why:

  • Customers want to be heard. NPS® gives detractors a way to express their concerns privately. By giving them an outlet, they’re less likely to follow it up with public negativity, even if given the option.
  • Finding out who is dissatisfied and looking for ways to make it right affords businesses the opportunity to generate positive reviews that would have otherwise been nonexistent.
  • By looking for trends in customer feedback, businesses can prioritize and tackle larger issues that impact more people which, in turn, influence more reviews.

If you love your customers, they’ll love you right back. Adopting customer-centric strategies like NPS® helps drive repeat business and increases the quantity and quality of reviews organically.

Whether or not your organization chooses to ask some customers or all customers for reviews thereafter, nothing beats knowing the true drivers of customer loyalty at your organization.

If you’re curious about how Listen360 can help you build a brand that customers adore, give us a shout.

You may have noticed a slight drop in your total number of reviews on Google. Google is known for making changes that can greatly impact businesses, but doesn’t always make formal announcements or provide notice.

They seem to be in the process of removing reviews that do not have a name associated with them. While some businesses still have anonymous reviews, many have reported that their anonymous reviews are completely gone from both their business page and their star rating calculation.

These reviews look something like this:

 

 

We can only assume that Google is doing this to improve accountability among the reviewing public and protect consumers from fake reviews. Our hope is that this change will result in more honest reviews and fewer overly-critical reviews that often come from anonymous users.

While this doesn’t directly impact Listen360, we empathize with the businesses that are impacted by this change. Here are some suggestions to continue building a solid online reputation:

  • Continue to gather Google reviews and diversify your presence on other review platforms, such as Facebook.
  • Display customer feedback on your own testimonial page or add a testimonial widget to your website.
  • Continue delivering a great customer experience so that you are building a strong reputation – both on and offline.

We hope this information helped shed some light on the recent Google changes. If you have any questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Listen360 Customers:

You may be wondering how Google’s change will impact Listen360 reports and other tools you may be using to gather analytics on your reviews. While anonymous reviews may have been removed from the web by Google, Listen360 will keep a record of these reviews and you’ll be able to see them in the reviews dashboard. If you are utilizing a Listen360 testimonial page, website widget, or AdStars, these features will not be affected by this Google change.