Reading your online reviews can make you feel terrific – or it can make you feel terrible. After all, if your insurance company gets a poor review online, it can affect whether or not new clients choose to come to your business. While most people understand if you get the occasional negative review here and there, multiple online complaints or a scathing one-star review can eventually be bad for your reputation. How can you turn this situation around? Here are some proven techniques.
Connect With the Client
If you notice a bad online review, you may be able to connect with the client privately and directly about their complaints. You could do this through social media if it’s connected to an account, or if you know who the customer is, you could contact them directly. In many cases, if you’re able to solve their problem quickly and professionally, they may choose to remove the poor review.
Respond Directly
While it’s not usually productive to debate who’s right and who’s wrong in an online forum, it is helpful for others to see that you are addressing the situation.
Always be professional and empathetic when you’re responding online. You can respond to poor reviews by letting the person know that you empathize with their situation and that you would like to speak directly with them to sort out the specific situation at hand.
According to Tech Republic, you should “whenever possible, figure out a solution to the problem and offer a remedy, not an explanation.” That helps other readers of the review know that you are a responsive, professional, and empathetic company. If the review is extremely angry, replying in a calm, pleasant manner shows that you have excellent professional behavior.
You can also choose to reply to all reviews as a matter of course. That means that the specific negative review is not the only one that receives your feedback – you also place an emphasis on the positive customer interactions that you have had. And thanking customers for positive reviews strengthens your relationship with them.
Ask for Removal (In Selected Instances)
According to Entrepreneur, “in some situations, you may be justified to ask the review site to remove the review, but that’s a rare event.” If the customer is wildly exaggerating or outright lying, the situation could be one that you can’t address with the individual.
Most of the time, review sites will not remove reviews since they are considered to be opinions, but in the case of blatantly false reviews or reviews that appear to violate the site’s terms of service, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Be Proactive
While working on your customer service now won’t change your poor reviews of the past, it can help you head off future problems. Create multiple channels for people to provide feedback about your company. Examples of feedback channels include:
- Customer surveys via email or phone
- Online feedback forms
- Feedback on live chat sessions
- Asking for feedback at the end of a phone call or other interaction
- Monitoring feedback on other sites and on social media
By collecting customer feedback, you can prevent some complaints in the future. Your clients feel heard, and they feel like you are genuinely attempting to address problems or gaps that they perceive to exist within your company.
Are you ready to upgrade your ability to serve your insurance clients? At American Agents Alliance, we have insurance agent marketing tools to assist you in your goal of better service and a better online presence. Contact us today to learn more.
