Online Reviews and Their Impact

Hello again and thanks for reading!
This entry is to go over the impact of online reviews for the consumers and businesses they affect.

Online reviews can be a business' best friend, or worst enemy.  Great reviews mean higher online ratings and can be more appealing to a potential client, while poor reviews can be very damaging and viewed as an inaccurate generalization of the business itself.  

When assessing a business according to their ratings, it is important to see how many total ratings have been given to receive that score.  Some businesses only have a few reviews giving them a very high rating , while other businesses may have 50-100 ratings with most good and a few bad reviews, causing their rating to be lower than the business with only a few.  

Unfortunately, some customers are quicker to leave bad reviews than good.  When someone has a not-so-pleasant experience, they want the world to know and a way to vent.  These online reviews and ratings never go away and can be very damaging to a business' reputation and "online status." 

My advice to the customer with an unpleasant experience, is to talk to the business either over the phone or in person first, before writing a bad review.  Most of the time, when a business owner or manager can get a clear picture of the situation they are able empathize and validate the customers concerns and are eager to find a remedy.  

We are all human and even businesses, new or long established, make mistakes.  As Alexander Pope put it, "To err is human, to forgive, divine."  Let's try to consider leaving good reviews more frequently and try to resolve unpleasant  situations first before leaving bad reviews.

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Author

Kyle Costa, K. Costa Floral