There’s always room for your business to grow and learn more. And those lessons may be right under your nose.

Yes, you read that right! You’ve been focusing on keeping up with trends or researching new social media platforms, but your reviews could be one of the best resources you have in learning about and strategizing for your business.

In this blog, we will highlight the aspects that come along with the positive, neutral and negative reviews your business gets and the helpful information you can gather from each!

Positive reviews

You may be wondering what you can learn from positive reviews. You’ve already been reminded of some of the great features of your business, which is great, but what’s the lesson to learn?

Well, one of the main takeaways with all of these review types is that responding to reviews is essential. No matter how complimentary a reviewer is of your business, they still deserve acknowledgment for going out of their way to leave a review.

In this instance, you are showing that you don’t just focus on resolving negative reviews.

Instead, you’re letting people who are reading your reviews know that if they also leave you a positive review, they will be appreciated for doing so.

Customers put a lot of value on online reviews. To understand why this is, click here.

Now, what can your business learn from positive reviews to make their products or services better? Quite a lot in fact!

Positive reviews are likely to highlight the details of your products or services that customers enjoyed the most.

Take a review that mentions how much a customer liked a restaurant’s new weekly appetizer deals, for example. Because of this, the restaurant may go on to make an entire bar menu of appetizer specials. This is all because the business got reviews that showed how much their customers love these types of offers!

Neutral reviews

The best way to understand the importance of a neutral review is to know, they’re never truly neutral. They require just as much attention as any other type of review. 

When you are approaching these middle ground reviews, remember not to get stuck on the star rating. There’s a lot more to be seen in this type of review.

Typically, a neutral review will be mixed with both positive and negative information about a business so take it as a learning lesson.

Here, you have information directly from the customer on what is great about your business and what is, well, not so great. Rather than discounting it as just another 3-star review, take it as a place to learn about your strengths to expand on and your weaknesses to improve upon.

When it comes to responding to these reviews, try to highlight the positive parts that the reviewer mentioned while still recognizing and offering solutions to their concerns.

As we said, no review should go unnoticed.

Looking to grow your review presence online? This blog has some helpful tips when it comes to gaining reviews for your business.

Negative reviews

And then comes the dreaded negative review.

First thing’s first, don’t go on the defensive when you get one. Instead, see a negative review as a constructive comment on what your business needs to improve.

This does mean, however, that you need to respond in a helpful and understanding way to your unhappy customer.

We have plenty of blogs to help you through the review response process, but we recommend starting here with, how to respond to negative online reviews.

Now that you’ve learned more about responding, what is it you can gather and learn from negative reviews?

Most businesses have at least a few low star reviews (if not, consider yourself lucky) and it can be beneficial to improve your business if you read into them and find patterns.

What do we mean by patterns exactly? Well, we’re talking about consistent trends in comments that mention specific issues that customers took with your business.

For example, if an auto repair shop has five negative reviews and all of them comment on the slow service of the shop, here is a pattern to take notice of!

The trend in negative reviews, in this case, is that the business has slow services.

From here, the auto repair business could focus on improving their efficiency and quickness in order to meet the concerns that were highlighted in their negative reviews.

By doing so, they are resolving the concerns of prior customers and eliminating the possibility of future negative reviews related to this issue at hand.

So, don’t disregard the content of a negative comment! Take these negative reviews as advice on how to improve your business. It could lead you to discover a consistent concern that you can resolve for your customers.

But what if you don’t see a pattern with the concerns in your negative reviews?

We suggest assessing what is in your control. Sometimes negative comments can be extreme and unreasonable, but others may ask for simple changes.

Address the changes that have the biggest influence on your business and are within your realm of fixing!

Final thoughts

There is a lot to be learned from your reviews!

Learning from reviews is not exclusive to certain types whether they are positive, negative or neutral. All reviews have an influence and a lesson to be learned.

Because managing your business's reviews can be difficult, our team is here to help. We have a group of experienced professionals who are focused on providing guidance and feedback in these circumstances and many others regarding your business’s reviews.

To learn more about our review marketing program and all it has to offer, click here.