Bad Ratings to Great Ratings in 30 Days

“Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned”

– William Congreve (if he was a businessman)

A 1-star google review is a bad news. It is a headline that says “Bad Company Alert!”. This is something you never want to be associated with your brand. If you don’t do something about it, a 1-star Google rating can put you out of business. Google ratings can drastically change customer acquisition. 

Customers see Google ratings as a measurement of a brand’s reliability. A one-star rating says that a brand is absolutely not reliable. Such Google reviews come from customers who have been scorned by the products or services. You can also expect such reviews from competitors. These are the people who want to unfairly gain an advantage over your brand. They will publish fake reviews to influence real customers. Before you can begin the process of improving your brand’s Google ratings, you need to understand where bad reviews are coming from. 

If bad reviews are actually fake reviews, you should directly skip step 2 of this process. Though, starting from Step 1 would help you even more. Even if you are getting good reviews there is always room for improvement. This process can help you get great reviews.

On the other hand, if bad reviews have come from actual customers, there is a lot of work to be done. It is advised that you begin without delay. The more you wait, the more customers you lose. Clock’s ticking!

Important Notes before you read ahead:

• The steps have been divided based on the purpose they fulfill.
• Many of these steps overlap with one another. This means you have to accomplish multiple tasks during that period.
• You can create a more relaxed schedule by accomplishing these tasks one after another. But, this will impact the timeframe of the process overall.  
• The timeline is based on approximations. Depending on the size of the company, they may vary.
• Regardless of time frames, the sequence of the process should remain the same.
• This process requires work from various departments of a business. Unless all departments commit to the process, it won’t yield desired results.
• This process is cyclical. So you would be returning to step 1 after completing the entire process. This allows you to maintain an inflow of great reviews. It in turn balances your overall Ggoogle ratings.
• This process works best when different individuals or departments are assigned responsibilities of different steps. This way, tasks are not overlapped despite overlapping timelines.
• Most importantly, you may need to consider using  an online review management software like Kooyal Reviews to help you be more efficient with collection and management of reviews.

Step 1: R&D

Day 1 to Day 5

Department: Marketing

Before you can act, you need to understand. Once you understand, you need to segregate. Only after segregating, you can begin hunting. This philosophy tells you to treat gathering reviews as a large scale hunt. You are hunting for multiple targets. Each target requires a different strategy. Furthermore, these hunts have to be carried out by different types of hunters.

First, you will need your customer data. You will have to study each of the customer reviews on Google. Then you cross-check these reviews with your list of customers. After you have studied these two, divide up your customers into the following categories:

• Customers with No Reviews
• Customers with Bad Reviews
• Customers with Complaints

As this article is focused on improving Google ratings, we shall not be discussing good reviews. You can check out some of our other blogs on Kooyal to learn more about how to respond to good reviews.

Step 2: Cleaning Stains

Day 6 to Day 16

Department: Customer Care

After step 1, you need to clean up the mess. If your bad reviews have come from disappointed customers, you need to remedy that. You should resolve their problem. If required, offer them compensation (e.g. coupon, free replacement, etc). The way to begin this approach is obviously with an apology. Solution and compensation come later. You should take every possible step to wash away that bad memory associated with your brand.

This is not just about making a great gesture and praying for a good review in the future. This step can work a miracle. If done right, it can turn a bad review into a great review.

The only person who can turn a bad review into a good review is the reviewer. Your customers have the power to edit their previous reviews. Once you have solved their problem request them to update their review. You can offer additional benefits like a discount on future purchases for this review. 

This step will improve the brand’s perception. Gradually, this step will make the majority of the bad reviews disappear. These in turn get converted into positive google reviews. Consequently, your overall google rating improves. It also shows your other customers your wonderful after-sales service. It goes to prove that even when you make a mistake your brand is generous enough to fix it and compensate.

One important aspect to note in this step is that you can’t please everyone. There will be people who wouldn’t budge regardless of the compensation offered. So don’t get disheartened by such people. Just apologize, thank them for their time and move on. It’s a volume game.

Step 3: Volume Game

Day 6 to Day 10

Department: Marketing

If you are running a business fairly well, bad reviews would be few and far between. The majority of customers would fall under the “No Review” category. Your biggest priority is to get several reviews. People are lazy and generally have no incentive for giving a review. The easiest way would be to give them an incentive. Perhaps a discount on a future purchase in exchange for a good review. You can learn more about getting the right review from our article “How to get Mind Blowing Reviews” on Kooyal Blogs.

If you have made the necessary effort in Step 1, you will know which customers to target. It generally takes a lot of time and resources to get this done. But, Kooyal Reviews will help you reach out to all of them for a review in just a click. You can complete 5 to 10 days worth of work in 1 day.

Once you start getting a volume of good reviews, the bad ones will be buried deep. The ideal ratio is to have 7 good reviews for every bad one. The only way to achieve that is to get a large volume of google reviews. So your average google rating falls between 3 to 4.5 stars. This will help you control the negative impact on future customers. 

Step 4: Ask Again

Day 15, Day 20, Day 25 & Day 30

Department: Marketing

When you send out a request to get reviews, don’t expect more than a 20% response. The majority of your customers would not give a review even after receiving a request. It doesn’t matter if you have provided great service. Remember, people are lazy. They care very little for reviews. So it is very necessary to send reminders to get reviews.

After a couple of rounds of reminders, you can get up to 70 to 80 percent responses. Expecting a 100% response is too optimistic. But, this process is very important to balance out bad google reviews with positive ones.

You will have to do this at intervals otherwise people will get annoyed. You will have to remove people who have already given a review from the send list. Once again, Kooyal Reviews will help you get this done in a matter of a few clicks.

Step 5: Filter to refine

Day 11 to Day 25

Department: Marketing & Customer Care

As the reviews start coming in you will have to see what’s what. You will be getting a mix of great, good, bad, and terrible google reviews. If you are not using review management software like Kooyal Reviews, you don’t get any control over the published reviews.

Alternatively, if you do use Kooyal Reviews, you have the power. All reviews go through this software. You can send a request for google ratings through this software. You can also control which reviews to publish through the same software.

The process is simple, any review above 3.5 stars, you should publish. Any rating below that, you should hold back.

Once you filter out the bad reviews, return to step 2. The cleansing cycle needs to be repeated. But this time you have the advantage of controlling the damage before it is published. Nobody will see the bad review. All they will see is the great review you will get after resolving the customer’s problem.

You basically get power over what people say about you on google reviews.

Step 6: A Little Goes a Long Way

Day 20 to Day 25

Department: Marketing

Once you get a balance on your brand’s overall rating, it’s time to push a little more. Why stop at 3 or 4 stars when you can make a run for 5.

You should pick out customers you have served best. These are the customers you know are very happy with your service/product. Alongside, you can also target customers who have given 3.5 stars or above.

The approach, in this case, matters a lot. It should seem generous, gentle and appealing. You can add future benefits in form of coupons or discounts along with the request. You can also package it as a gratitude gift. The same can be extended towards customers who have already given your brand a 5-star rating.

Alternatively, you can also approach by asking what you did wrong or what would it take to get 5 stars. You can learn from this and serve them accordingly in the future.

Once again, Kooyal Reviews is at your service. You can pick out customers you want to approach from a single window. You can create a model message and send it to all your customers with a click.

Step 7: Back to Step 1

Day 30

All you have to do now is keep the process going. If you stop, you lose control. It is necessary to keep getting more reviews. It is even more necessary to hold off bad reviews. If you can convert bad reviews into great reviews, you have pulled off a miracle.

Kooyal offers a wide arsenal of business management, organization, communication and marketing tools. Online Review Management is just one of our amazing products. You can check out more of our offerings here.

The world of online business is changing and so are the customers. Kooyal helps your brand be up to date.

About Kooyal

Kooyal offers a wide arsenal of business management, organization, communication and marketing tools. Online Review Management is just one of our amazing products. You can check out more of our offerings here.

The world of online business is changing and so are the customers. Kooyal helps your brand be up to date.