Respond. Always RESPOND
It’s Sunday night. You’ve had a great, but tough weekend of business. You just want to relax, shut it down for a bit and not worry about your restaurant. Go ahead.
But on Monday morning you have to answer your reviews. I know, no one loves answering reviews. We’ve been long indoctrinated to dread it, ever since since your mom made you send thank you notes after Christmas.
But the alternative is to ignore them is is almost the same as not saying thank you after someone gave you a compliment in person. It’s just common courtesy.
The three main reasons to quickly responding to reviews are as follows:
- It’s polite. Simple manners say that is someone compliments you, you should thank them.
- You learn how to improve. Yes, some people just want to bitch, but others offer genuine valuable feedback. We once answered a review suggesting the restaurant use better ketchup on the tables. We thanked the reviewer for the feedback, let the owner know and he actually upgraded the ketchup. Now, the restaurant receives several reviews each month raving about the bottled ketchup! Who knew?
- You can mitigate damage negative reviews might cause.
We recommend answering good reviews within a day–thank them while the memory is fresh and you’ll most likely get a pledge to return. Bad reviews, however, we answer after two days. Why the difference? Our experience has shown more than three times the number of negative reviewers are willing to change their review after the anger they felt has subsided. If you hit them too quickly with a response–even if it’s a heartfelt apology, they will still be angry and will ignore. You. After a couple of days they are more reasonable, and often willing to hear your explanation or apology and upgrade or remove their review entirely.
But good or bad, you have to answer them. If you would have known promptly written thank you notes would get you a better Christmas gift the following year from Aunt Betty, you probably would have written them more quickly!