Review Management: What Is It and How It Benefits Business?

When it comes to translating reviews into actionable approaches across different online platforms, it can be time-consuming ⌛ and overwhelming right?

Well not anymore, with the right strategies💡 and information about review management, you can completely identify areas for improvement and express your interest and dedication toward customer satisfaction with ease. 

The purpose of this article is to clarify what review management is, and how it completes reputation management strategy with its benefits. In addition, discover the best practices for implementing successful review management with insights into the top review management software.

What is review management?

Review management is a process of tracking, handling, and responding to internet reviews related to your business. This act aims to help you manage your review responses effectively, resolve any customer issues in real time and quickly detect and remove fake reviews before they lead to issues.

With every business model shifting towards an online platform, every business needs an effective review management strategy. It has been reported that nine out of ten people read reviews before visiting or purchasing from a business, so ignoring the sites where people talk about you can negatively affect your customer acquisition.

Implementing key brand reputation strategies in review management can significantly enhance your business’s credibility and customer trust.

How does review management complete reputation management?

Review management plays a key role in addressing online customer feedback in today’s digital world.  It is a part of the larger framework of reputation management, which considers a company’s complete image and public perception. Reputation management consists of major elements:

• Holistic Approach
• Long-Term Brand Image
• Social media listening
• Customer experience

When you implement review management into your reputation strategy it unlocks three key factors that are a must for every business: understanding customer perspectives, addressing concerns quickly, and highlighting your brand’s strengths to attract new customers.

For example, reputation management is like a whole house where you need to take care of the entire property from its exterior, landscaping, and aesthetics to its overall structure (social media sentiments, media coverage, and brand image). Online review management on the other hand is like taking care of the interior of your house, you need to clean it, organize it, and keep maintenance from time to time(respond to reviews).

Benefits of review management for businesses

Review management provides your business with a wide range of benefits. Some of the major benefits of implementing review management are:

Improves brand reputation online

With proper customer review management businesses can improve their overall brand reputation. As every platform is online based, by addressing both positive and negative reviews demonstrates a commitment to customer feedback. It increases visibility & brand advocacy which act as social proof, influencing potential customers who see your business in a favorable light.

Builds strong customer perception and  trust

Reviews are closely linked to customer perception and trust, as they mirror genuine interactions with your brand. Good reviews foster trust and credibility, whereas bad ones can undermine them. By managing reviews, you can quickly shape this perception, highlighting the positives and addressing the negatives.

Boosts Search Engine Ranking(SEO)

Customer reviews play a crucial role in how Google and other search engines rank websites. Brands that gather many positive reviews often appear more prominently in search results. Thoughtful management of reviews not only improves your online reputation but also increases visibility, drawing more organic traffic to your website.

Provides Valuable Customer Insights

Through online review analysis, you can understand customer sentiment and pinpoint both strengths and areas for improvement in your brand. This enables you to tailor your products or services to better suit customer needs, ultimately fostering a more positive perception of your brand. When you listen to customer reviews, you can identify trends and adapt your brand message, marketing strategies, and improve customer service accordingly.

Empowers Better Decision-Making

Review management data can heavily influence you to make strategic business decisions by providing insights into customer sentiment and feedback. A customer review data-driven approach supports the growth of your business by allowing you to allocate resources and marketing efforts more effectively. Allowing you to make better decisions based on customer feedback supports the overall success of your organization.

Competitive Advantage

Effective review management lets you stand out from competitors who overlook their online reputation. You may discover and understand what not to do online by analyzing your competition. Your company can have an enormous competitive edge in the market by actively seeking out and reacting to client feedback and positive evaluations.

Top 6 review management software

With continuous growth in your business, it’s tough to track and indicate reviews across every online platform. That is where review management software comes into play, it allows you to provide centralized solutions for business review management.

Here is in-depth information on the top six review management software listed below:

1. Trustpilot

Known for its focus on customer reviews and brand image, Trustpilot is a major participant in the review management software industry. The primary purpose of Trustpilot is to enable truthful evaluations from validated clients. It allows users to rate businesses with stars and provide in-depth evaluations, allowing them to paint a more detailed picture of their overall experience.

Businesses can use Trustpilot’s analytics tools to track their score, identify trends, and understand consumer sentiment, going beyond basic reviews. In addition to operating in over 90 markets, the platform supports reviews in over 40 languages, making it an ideal platform for connecting with customers worldwide.

As of June 2024, Trustpilot had over 400 million written reviews and a large user base. You can also manage reviews with this software without disrupting workflows with tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Slack. With this streamlined approach, time is saved and reviews are managed consistently.

2. Podium

Podium offers a broad range of tools designed to make customer interactions more efficient and centralize review management. Its unified communication platform integrates phone calls, text messaging, SMS forwarding, and online chat into one interface, allowing businesses to connect with customers on their preferred channels and manage all interactions centrally.

Business owners can automate review request texts after positive customer interactions, prompting satisfied customers to leave positive reviews on Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp. In addition to providing in-depth analytics, it will allow your business to track key metrics like customer sentiment, review volume, and rating, and the impact of review management efforts on growth.

Users of Podium experience an average increase of 2.6 stars in their Google My Business rating. With proper reviews and rating your business SEO can improve and can be more visible to your potential customers.  

3. Reviewly AI

Reviewly AI, streamline processes for business by offering advanced insights into reviews and automated solutions for managing them. It examines the sentiment of reviews, identifying whether feedback is positive, negative, or neutral.

By leveraging AI, Reviewly automates the repetitive aspects of online review management. For example, it can automatically send personalized review requests to happy customers based on specific criteria. It also helps customers write high-quality reviews, saving businesses time and ensuring quick responses.

In addition to analyzing reviews, this software identifies common themes & keywords and highlights specific areas for improvement. Also, Reviewly AI prioritizes data security and privacy by implementing robust security measures to protect sensitive customer information and adhering to all relevant privacy regulations.

4. Yotpo

Yotpo is a well-known platform that helps businesses of all sizes manage customer reviews. It makes it easy to ask customers for feedback through emails or text messages, enabling you to use their input to enhance your products and services.

It smoothly connects with different e-commerce businesses, enabling businesses to gather reviews at important moments during the customer journey. This thorough method offers valuable customer feedback at each step of the buying process.

Businesses that implement Yotpo loyalty programs see twice as many repeat purchases from customers as it provides beneficial features such as customizable review requests, automatic spam filters, social media integration, and a performance dashboard. Implementing Yotpo helps your business to foster customer trust, increase website sales, and enhance your online reputation.

5. Reputation.com

Reputation.com, a cloud-based platform, gathers feedback from various places like social media and review websites. It uses advanced analysis tools to understand this feedback and help improve your product plans based on what customers think.

Additionally, the platform lets you keep an eye on how your brand is doing on Google and Facebook, see how you stack up against competitors, and get instant updates on customer reviews and feedback. This platform manages your organization’s reputation performance from top to bottom, online and in-person with multi-channel feedback, AI-based insights & actions, competitive benchmarking, and a better KPI.

6. Bird Eye

BirdEye aggregates reviews from your preferred review sites, as well as 150+ different platforms, ensuring that you get a comprehensive understanding of everything being said about you online.

You can reply at scale while keeping a human touch with enterprise AI solutions and personalized templates. Its language translation feature also automatically converts reviews into English and responds back in the customer’s language to enable multilingual customer service.

With BirdEye, you can organize reviews into custom fields (regions, products, rating numbers, etc.) to help you understand how different areas of your business are performing, helping you create a comprehensive strategy.

What are the best practices for successful review management?

• Claim All Business Listing Pages: Give priority to the review sites that are most important and influential for your business. Make sure that your business appears on all significant review sites with accurate and detailed information. Incorporate high-quality photos, business hours, contact details, and a website link to simplify the review process for customers.

• Utilize Review Management Software: To make your review process more efficient, think about adopting review management service software tailored to your business needs. This tool allows you to oversee reviews from various platforms in a single dashboard, evaluate customer sentiments and common patterns, automate review request emails to happy customers, and create draft responses to speed up your replies.

• Create Review Response Guidelines: Implement a systematic strategy for handling reviews by defining guidelines for addressing positive and negative comments. Make sure to maintain a consistent brand voice and tone, and reply promptly within 24-48 hours. As a business, you need to remain courteous and professional, even when you are addressing negative reviews.

• Analyze Reviews and Identify Trends: Focusing only on positive or negative reviews isn’t enough for effective business review management; you need to analyze the content to identify common themes and recurring issues. By tracking customer sentiment over time, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your response strategies and gauge overall customer satisfaction.

• Share Positive Reviews on Social Media: Make sure to highlight positive feedback on your social media platforms to establish trust and credibility with potential customers. Showcasing reviews and testimonials and actively responding to comments and questions makes clients feel valued and helps build a sense of community.

• Encourage Positive Reviews: After a positive interaction with customers, it’s better to ask your customers politely to leave a review on your preferred platforms. Make sure to provide links that direct customers to your business review profile, and consider offering small incentives and live discounts for leaving reviews.

• Learn to Identify Fake Reviews: Fake reviews can sometimes appear and negatively impact your business. To identify these, watch for signs like “generic or repetitive language,” unrealistic claims, reviews from accounts with no prior activity, and “multiple negative reviews posted at once.”

Boost business revenue with review management

Efficiently managing customer reviews is a key strategy for increasing business revenue. By responding to feedback, resolving issues, and highlighting positive reviews, businesses can enhance their reputation, build trust, and attract new customers. A 360-degree review management system ensures customer satisfaction and provides valuable insights for ongoing improvement.

In today’s tech-driven marketplace, where online reputation greatly influences consumer behavior, focusing on review management is essential for continuous business growth and higher profitability. By effectively utilizing customer reviews, businesses can gain a competitive advantage and ensure long-term success.

FAQ

What’s the difference between review management and reputation management?

Review management primarily focuses on dealing with customer reviews and feedback. Its main purpose is to monitor, respond to, and improve online reviews on various online platforms. Whereas, reputation management scope is broader than review management its main purpose is shaping and maintaining a positive overall perception of the brand and organization as a whole.

Why are the review management tools important?

Review management tools are important in maintaining a positive online reputation for business. Some of its major importance are:

• Monitoring and Insights
• Timely Responses
• Enhancing Customer Experience
• SEO Impact
• Competitive Edge