How you can own your customer sentiment proactively

Harry Lancaster

Harry Lancaster

Own Your Customer Sentiment…like a boss!

In the world of business, perception is everything. Tracking how customers perceive and feel about your brand is fundamental to your business success and long-term valuation.

Assessing customer sentiment is not just about gauging happiness levels. It’s about understanding the underlying reasons behind their feelings. 

Positive sentiment reinforces your brand’s reputation, customer loyalty, improves sales, and boosts local search ranking. It’s a virtuous cycle. On the other hand, negative sentiment can quickly damage your brand’s image and drive customers away.

In this 3-minute guide, we will explain how you can maximise positive sentiment and mitigate negative feedback.

But did you know:

Not that long ago, small business owners had one-on-one relationships with their customers. Word-of-mouth referrals were fostered and complaints were directed to the business in question.

These days, other parties have stepped into that dynamic by encouraging your customers to post reviews about your business on their platforms.

For most businesses, that means Google, but there’s a host of others that you may have to deal with, such as Product Review, Trustpilot, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more.

They are businesses too, and guess what? Their core product is to monetize your customers’ sentiments! Their core objective is to get clicks, or to be the knowledge base of where the market should spend its money. That’s right; your customer has somehow become their customer!

Your customer sentiment can be and should be under your sovereignty. It’s yours, and our belief is you should own it and not the other way around! But how do you minimise the negative potential of these third-party players while also maximising the reality they can provide benefit if managed appropriately.

How to Take Control of Your Customer Sentiment:

Provide Opportunities for Direct Feedback:

Offer as many opportunities for your customers to give you direct feedback as possible. Asking at the checkout, by email, via feedback forms, surveys, or online polls, it’s all useful information. 

The key is for all of these formats to be under your control and not outsourced to third parties such as Google reviews. Just start asking and build up to a more comprehensive strategy.

Boost Positive Feedback:  If feedback is positive, respond with thanks and then ask them to share it via whichever platforms are most appropriate for your business. Asking a happy customer to share with an online review or as a testimonial provides social proof to others. You can offer thanks and gratitude and maybe a token of appreciation.

Mitigate Negative Feedback: Negative feedback is an opportunity to fix an issue quickly. Owning the feedback channel allows you to turn ‘tragics into magics’ and often leads to loyalty and even good reviews. Again offer thanks for speaking with you directly and if appropriate offer some kind of compensation (extra magic!).

Highlight: If you don’t own your customer sentiment, someone else will, and this leaves you exposed and vulnerable. To fix this, create a suite of strategies to strengthen feedback channels to you and your company directly.

Takeaway: Ask for feedback in as many ways as possible, assess the data instinctively and methodically, while also responding appropriately.

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