Don’t Let Another Comment Or Review Pass You By!
It’s no secret that having good reviews (and lots of them!) is something to strive for on social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Yelp. However, something equally important that a lot of business owners fail to do, is responding to and interacting with these commenters and reviewers.
I get asked a lot, “Why do I need to answer? If it was a good review, it should speak for itself.”
Let me break down for you exactly why it’s so important.
When asked by Sprout Social in an online survey, 90% of Facebook and Twitter users said that they have used social media as a direct means of communication with a brand. In fact, social media outranked every other form of communication, including phone and email, as the first place people would turn if they had a problem with a product or service. Consumers are using businesses’ social media pages as 24-hour customer service. It’s fast. It’s convenient. AND they can reach out to a business instantly, even in a pandemic.
When you start to think of your social media comments and reviews as customer service requests, it makes much more sense to prioritize answering them. After all, if a customer called your customer service department with a problem, you wouldn’t just leave them hanging. You would do all you can to fix the situation and make the customer happy. Your social media page should be no different.
When asked how long they expect to wait for a business’s reply, 37% of consumers said less than 30 minutes, while 31% said less than two hours. The expectations for good customer service on social media platforms is high, and it’s worth your time to invest in it.
Companies who invested in good customer service through social media saw customers spend 20% – 40% more with them.
Finally, a whopping 71% of consumers claim that a positive social media-based customer service experience would make them more likely to recommend a brand.
71 PERCENT!
Building trust between your business and your consumers is the most likely way to get them to recommend you, come back to you, and spend more on you.
I get it, sometimes replying to Google reviews can be a pain. The reviews are often not specific, the criticism not constructive, or the information is just plain wrong. But, it is beyond important to treat each comment and review as a customer service opportunity. Creating a dialogue is essential to good customer service and good customer service is essential on social media.
