The use of the internet has become a popular place for voicing opinions, complaints and recommendations on products, services and businesses. Research on word of mouth effects provides plenty of evidence that a satisfied customer may tell some people about his experience with a company, but a dissatisfied customer will tell everybody he meets (Chatterjee, 2001). Online customer reviews serve to highlight—positively or negatively—various aspects of your business, including products, services, purchase interactions or customer support engagements (McCormick, 2016). This blog post will explore some advantages and disadvantages of online reviews and also conclude on whether or not you as a business should allow customer reviews online.

Advantages

• Improved customer trust and confidence

By allowing customers to submit reviews of recently purchased products, businesses can increase the number of reviews on their sites which will lead to a more reliable portrayal of product quality and usefulness (Rains, 2010). In allowing reviews, you as a business are showing you are open to the truth whether it be good or bad and embracing the thoughts of your customers. This improves your reputation as a business as you are showing transparency.

• Potential increase in conversion rate

One way this happens is online reviews are accessible from anywhere around the country or world. For a business that has a physical location in one town, positive online reviews can bring them out-of-town clients (McCallion, 2015). Positive reviews can also turn people visiting your website into buying customers which is known as conversion. A positive review can make all the difference than if there was no review for a potential customer to read.

• Highlights areas for improvement

Online reviews can help raise awareness of any improvements that can be made related to your business. Reviews which highlight these areas are a good opportunity for a business to resolve a customers problem as well as improving business practises and preventing a problem from happening again. Many customers will have good suggestions about how things can be improved which can be a free source of great business ideas (Business Queensland, 2016).

Disadvantages

• One negative review can skew a potential customers view of them

Customers who have had a very bad experience are much more likely to leave a review than someone who has had a good experience with a product. This means that negative reviews are a lot more visible for a potential customer to see which may skew their view. A potential customers view can also be changed after reading a bad review as people will seek a response to this, if there isn’t one then they assume it’s all true and their purchase could be swayed by what was said (McCallion, 2015). Negative online reviews are less than ideal, but they are not the end of the world. If you know how to respond to negative reviews, you can mitigate the damage they incur and in some cases, benefit from them (McCormick, 2016).

• It is easy for competitors to post false reviews

Sadly, we are in a day and age where competitors take it upon themselves to falsify reviews on your page by creating a number of different accounts and posting negative reviews. This is a form of corporate sabotage for the digital age, and there is little a business can do about it unless they can 100% prove the negative reviews were from a competitor (McCallion, 2015).

Tips

Business Queensland (2016) offer some great tips for successfully managing online reviews:

• Decide who will monitor and respond to customer reviews and ensure they are someone who will provide good quality responses
• Respond to both positive AND negative reviews so that customers can see you are acknowledging them and taking on board the critisicm
• Manage negative reviews by ensuring that customers can only see the negative reviews that are constructive
• Do not post fake reviews
• Encourage positive reviews by asking happy customers to post a review

See the full report here: https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/consumer-laws/customer-service/managing-customer-reviews/tips

Should you allow your customers to leave reviews online?

There is no doubt that online reviews for products and services have revolutionised shopping behaviour. Online reviews are generally a really good way to gain new customers and increase sales and while there are drawbacks to online reviews, these are only small and more importantly manageable. According to recent statistics, 90% of consumers read online reviews, and 88% of them trust online reviews when considering a business. This means that by not having online reviews, you are denying 88% of your potential customers the information they consider important for making a purchase (McCormick, 2016). The most important thing to understand before you set up a review system on your website is the impact that online reviews can have on your business and to ensure you are able to use the reviews to build your online reputation rather than let them ruin it.

References

Business Queensland (2016) Benefits of online customer reviews for business. [Online] Available at: https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/consumer-laws/customer-service/managing-customer-reviews/benefits. [Accessed 23rd Feb 2018].

Business Queensland (2016) Tips for successfully managing online customer reviews. [Online] Available at: https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/consumer-laws/customer-service/managing-customer-reviews/tips. [Accessed 23rd Feb 2018].

Chatterjee, P. (2001) Online Reviews: Do Consumers Use Them? Association for
Consumer Research, p129-134.

McCallion, M. (2015) Pros and Cons of Online Review Sites. [Online] Available at: https://estateapps.co.uk/blog/pros-and-cons-of-online-review-sites. [Accessed 24th Feb 2018].

McCormick, K. (2016) The Power of Online Customer Reviews. [Online] Available at: https://thrivehive.com/power-online-customer-reviews/. [Accessed 24th Feb 2018].

Rains, J. (2010) Pros and Cons of Online Customer Product Reviews. [Online] Available at: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/pros-and-cons-of-online-customer-product-reviews-1/. [Accessed 23rd Feb 2018].