RatePoint

RatePoint’s Small Business Survival Kit

In the current economic environment, a solid business reputation is critical to ensure repeat business and customer loyalty. Customers want to know businesses care about their experience.

RatePoint’s co-founder and CEO, Neal Creighton, was recently quoted by bMighty offering tips for small businesses to manage their online reputation to increase customer retention and create attention from potential customers.
Here are the tips from Neal:

1.    Move From Reactive To Proactive — It’s impossible to track everything that’s being said about your business or products online. Even small businesses without a Web presence — the local pizza shop or hardware store — find themselves being talked about on review sites. Until now, the strategy has been to chase after the latest negative review to either put out the fire or pursue the most recent positive review to encourage additional dialogue. Small businesses should change their mentality from being reactive to proactive when it comes to customer reviews. This means proactively soliciting feedback from your customers at every opportunity and in a timely manner while the experience is still fresh. The majority of feedback that is proactively solicited is positive.

2.    Don’t Be Afraid Of Negative Feedback — To know what customers are thinking, businesses have to ask. Many small businesses fear negative feedback, but failing to recognize and fix negative customer experiences can harm your business, its reputation, and its future sales. A negative experience is an opportunity to display superb customer service and personify a brand as being in-touch with its customer base. Customers want to know businesses care about their experience. By proactively asking for feedback and proactively responding, a business can significantly enhance its brand.

3.    Make It Easy To Collect (And Ultimately Promote) Feedback — A suggestion box or a standalone survey doesn’t create communication between a customer and a retailer, nor does it fix a problem that may have just happened. Traditional brick and mortar businesses can also leverage new online tools to collect and promote customer feedback and reviews. Customer feedback request tools can be used not only on Web sites, but also on receipts, invoices, e-mails, and at point of purchase.

Read more about how your business can stay ahead of the competition.