Over the last few weeks I’ve talked to several business owners who realize that online customer reviews can have a big impact on their businesses, but they are unwilling to establish business processes to make it more likely that customers will leave positive comments. They trust to luck that customers will leave great comments and if some customers don’t, then it’s not worth the effort to find out why.
Frankly, I don’t understand this attitude. Smart business owners want to find out which customers are happy and which customers are not, and they want to find out why. They’re not willing to trust to luck that the happy customers will leave online reviews and the unhappy ones won’t. Smart business owners want to learn what’s working well from the customer’s point of view and what needs to be fixed and then they use that information to improve their business operations and customer service.
The concept of customer loyalty from the Net Promoter methodology can help those smart business owners. The Net Promoter Score was developed by Fred Reichheld and discussed in his 2003 Harvard Business Review article, “The One Number You Need to Grow.” It’s a metric that measures the likelihood that your customers will recommend you to their friends and colleagues, and Reichheld found that this Net Promoter Score was the metric most closely correlated with success across most business sectors.
Applying the Net Promoter Score to your business will help you measure customer loyalty and also help you evaluate the effectiveness of business improvements. Using Net Promoter will also help you identify those customers who would most likely write glowing online customer reviews as well as any customers who remain dissatisfied. Ask the happy customers to leave Web reviews and thank them when they’ve responded to your request. Engage with the unhappy customers to try to find a way to repair your business relationship and try to turn them into boosters of your business.
Don’t just trust to luck. Use a survey methodology like Net Promoter to encourage online business referrals promoting your business, and use the customer feedback to continually improve your business and grow your numbers of loyal customers.
To learn how customer feedback can help you collect great online customer reviews as well as help your business grow, please contact Rust Reviews.
