Why this article does not cite numbers
Percentages about responding to reviews get passed on just as often as they get checked. We do not repeat them here, because we could not trace them back to a source that actually supports the claim. What follows is included because it can be shown, not because it makes an impression.
What responding to reviews demonstrably does
Two things whose effect is not in question. First: what is written in a reply is public text, tied to the business. Google describes its AI summaries of businesses as based on reviews; a business that does not reply lets its customers write the business's description entirely on their own.
Second: a reply is visible to everyone who reads the review afterwards. The person who wrote the review is rarely the audience that matters most — the hundred people who read it later are. With a complaint, the reply is often judged more important than the complaint itself.
What we deliberately do not claim
A handful of figures show up in almost every presentation on this subject, and we do not use them, because we could not trace them back to a source that actually supports the claim:
- That one fewer star costs a fixed percentage of revenue. The underlying studies cover specific industries and specific platforms, and the conclusions do not simply transfer to an arbitrary local business.
- That a given percentage of consumers "abandon a purchase" over unanswered reviews. The research this is traced back to usually measures something else: that people read reviews, not that they walk away because of them.
- That there is a hard deadline within which consumers expect a reply. We have not been able to find a source that backs up the numbers that keep circulating.
That does not make responding to reviews any less useful. It just means we sell it on what it actually is: public communication that belongs to your relationship with your customers, and that, for almost everyone, currently goes untouched.
What a working process needs at minimum
An agreed turnaround time — 24 hours for us, and an alert within the hour for a negative review. A style guide covering form of address, tone, and what is never promised. A contact person per location for cases where the reply needs factual knowledge. And someone who reads every reply before it goes live.
That last point is not a given now that language models write perfectly decent drafts. We use them too, but an unread reply to a complaint is exactly the kind of risk you do not want to take. How we set this up is on the review management page.
What we do not do
We do not write reviews, buy them, or have them written on a client's behalf. We also do not ask for them in exchange for a discount, points or gifts. That breaches Google's policies, and it is also the kind of risk that can cost a chain its credibility in one go.
Bronnen
- Google, policy on user-generated content and contributions to business profiles — support.google.com/contributionpolicy.
- Google, explanation of AI summaries based on reviews in the Places documentation — developers.google.com/maps.