Worse Than Sticks And Stones: Pay Attention To Customer Reviews

By Cheryl Knight, contributing writer

Client reviews posted on the Internet have taken a prominent role when customers — or patients or students — determine where to spend their money. An article by CNN highlights the lengths that consumers will go to research the best chance at a good experience.

“We’ve found that 65 percent of travelers won’t even book a hotel if it hasn’t had a review written about it,” says Margaret Ady of business review marketing firm TrustYou, quoted in the CNN article.

Sites such as TrustYou allow businesses to track and even respond to their reviews, giving them an opportunity to use review tracking as a marketing tool. Collating thousands of customer reviews from more than 250 websites from around the world, TrustYou gathers the results and puts them through an algorithm to help businesses get an overall view of how their business fairs against other companies in the same industry.

Purchases Driven By Reviews

A Foresee Results white paper underscores the importance of customer reviews, and not just for restaurants, hotels, and destinations. The report’s findings revealed that 49 percent of shoppers online bought a product due to an online review of it. Also, according to the report, sites that offer customer reviews have a competitive advantage over sites that do not, driving both satisfaction and customer loyalty.

In addition, reviews drive conversation, influencing many customers’ purchasing decisions. According to the white paper, 39 percent who purchased from online sites that offered reviews cite the product review as a main influencer in their purchasing decision. The satisfaction score of online shoppers who used sites that offered reviews also had a satisfaction score 21 percent above the average.

What IT Solutions Providers Can Do

As a trusted advisor, encourage your clients to be aware of what their customers are saying about them and to establish a system to accept and respond to comments.

And as a business leader … do you know what people are saying about you?