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It may surprise you to know that according to the Pew Research Center over forty percent of U.S. adults under fifty years old say they almost always read customer ratings or reviews when buying a product or service for the first time. So it is safe to say online reviews can be a great marketing tool. Like many, just the talk of reviews might make you cringe, but it can’t be stressed enough that reviews are like gold. They boost your online visibility and can help your auto shop rank better in search results.

More directly, reviews can mold your prospective customer’s perceptions of your business. This means that of course you want all five star reviews all of the time, but let’s be realistic. No business is perfect all of the time! For instance, if you looked at two businesses with the same amount of reviews, say a hundred, and one business had a hundred five star reviews and the other had only eighty five-star reviews, you might lift an eyebrow in suspicion and disbelief. It is okay to have feedback from your customers.

Also, it can be argued that it is not even always necessarily the reviews you get but rather how you respond to those reviews. Responding to your customer’s reviews shows your customer that you are engaged, care and are invested in satisfying their needs. And yes, responding to positive reviews is also very important! Of course, first quickly address those negative reviews in a constructive way, but then pay attention to how you are responding to those positive reviews. As suggested by Barry Simon in his blog, The Art Of Responding To Consumer Reviews, here’s the number one rule.

DON’T COPY PASTE THE SAME RESPONSE!

Often when you have a lot of reviews to respond to, it is tempting to cut corners by writing a generic response and doing the good ol’ cut and paste move. As nice as a gesture as it was to take the time to leave some kind of response, it actually can be regarded as insincere. Here’s a quick fix while still maintaining some review response speed.

Tip 1 – Switch greetings

Change the way you start a response by incorporating their name in the greeting and using different words to greet your customers. For example, use hi, hello, hey or even greetings!

Tip 2 – Swap and rearrange adjectives, verbs and sentence structures.

Rearranging sentence structures: This is a great opportunity to play with the way you say what you would like. Here are some example variations.

Variation 1: Thank you for the wonderful review! We are happy to hear you enjoyed the quickness of your service and the refreshments in the waiting room. We always strive to make sure our customers are well taken care of.

Variation 2: We are excited to hear you enjoyed the refreshments in the waiting room and the quickness of your service. We always strive to make sure our customers are well taken care of. Thank you for the great review!

Variation 3: As we always strive to make sure our customers are well taken care of, we are happy to hear that you enjoyed the refreshments in the waiting room and the quickness of your service. Thank you for your business!

Swapping adjectives and verbs: Get creative and experiment with your words. In the variations above, you can see where changes were made. For example, take a look at “We are excited…” in Variation 2 vs. “We are happy…” in Variation 1 and “wonderful review” in Variation 1 vs. “great review” in Variation 2.

Tip 3 – Include a special detail

Find something positive they said about your business and include that in your response. For example:

Customer: “….I was especially thankful that Albert took the time to locate the service plan I had purchased with the car. I couldn’t remember the plan account number, and he called the dealership and tracked it down for me….”

You: Thank you for the great review! We are happy to hear you were happy to hear Albert was able to locate your service plan and log it for future visits. We are excited to see you back for your transmission service.

Tip 4 – Make a list

Start making a list of all your changes and rearrangements. Then you can actually copy and paste different responses as purely templates and make the necessary changes using Tips 1-3.