Contact center agents might want to encourage customers who loved your products or services to post their thoughts online. Here’s why.
Almost three quarters of customers trust online customer reviews as much as personal recommendations, says Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey. They’re taking anonymous reviews as seriously as they take their moms’ and friends’ thoughts.
What’s worse, a bad review online can live indefinitely. That is, unless your contact center takes a proactive step to make disgruntled customers who post online happy again.
These steps from John Rizzo and Michael Santoro, authors of Niche Dominance: Creating Order Out of Your Digital Marketing Chaos, can help.
- Develop a five-star reputation. Regularly ask happy customers to post great reviews on your Facebook Fan page and popular review sites such as Yelp, Google Plus Local and CitySearch.
- Manage your reputation. Regularly check reviews. It’s OK if they’re not all positive. Those that are negative are an opportunity for contact center pros to shine: Seek out customers who make negative posts, offer to help them resolve it offline and ask them to update posts once they’re satisfied.