Online reviews can harness valuable feedback for your business as you are gaining insight from a customer’s perspective of how they have viewed your company.
These reviews can be very helpful when considering your business’s drawbacks by evaluating what a customer has written and why they have done so; using this feedback can highlight what needs to be improved inside your company to gain a wider audience or to bring back previous customers. Reviewing constructive criticism from customers can not only give you an insight of the potential limitations in your business but it can also open doors for further innovation to be established in the process.
Social monitoring allows businesses to use social media applications to connect to their target audience by tracking how their brand and product names are perceived online. Companies can also gain critical insights into their own popularity, information relating to crucial competitors, and discover any potential customers searching for their services in the neighbouring area.
For the accommodation sector, social monitoring is a key element in identifying what type of reviews past and current guests are leaving about their stay, online. Getting a negative stay review is not necessarily a bad situation; your team’s response to the review is what matters.
When dealing with a bad review, you have the opportunity to respond in a way that helps you fix a moment of broken trust. Consider what the guest’s issue is (e.g., “the shower head was broken”; “it was too noisy on the street outside”), and whether you have the possibility to change the situation. Whether the issue can be fixed by your team (the shower head) or it is out of your control (the noise levels outside), replying to reviews requires a sympathetic tone with the customer, and choosing the right approach can help you rebuild the guest’s trust in your service – the reason they booked with you in the first place.
Monitoring and responding to the reviews can also give you a hindsight of the limitations of your service, allowing you to then improve or adjust these foundations to build customer confidence. What’s more, listening to and acting upon feedback from previous stays shows your guests that you are listening to them, allowing you to improve customer satisfaction and drive direct bookings from new and returning guests in the future.
Quickly responding and listening to customer reviews can also give your business a fundamental advantage over your competitors as it gives an example of a trustworthy bond between you and your guests, developing a sense of confidence that increases your brand’s name and reputation in the long run.
