Every big brand, no matter how professional and effective, sometimes faces negative reviews. No negative comments means no concern - it is only about products and services that no one has bought, that no one made any critical opinion.

A good brand is.

Whether a customer buys a product or service, they want to feel like they've gained some value. This means that meeting and exceeding customer needs is a great way to differentiate yourself. A focus on value builds brand loyalty.

However, before you can gain customers who are looking for a certain value, your brand must gain a positive image. When other people talk about a brand, it becomes desirable. One way to ensure proper publicity is to work with celebrities. Matching a brand with a celebrity is a common practice in business. In most cases, the benefits outweigh the risks - after all, celebrities influence millions of people. What's more, with the rise of social media, it's much easier to get collaborations. Instead of recording a TV or radio commercial, you can ask them to post about your brand on social media.

Another characteristic of a good brand is brand integrity. Brand integrity is crucial in business. Delivering on a promise and meeting a specific need achieves loyalty among your target audience. Branding is, after all, a way to define a company to customers and the marketplace. As you build your brand, it's important to find unique ways to differentiate yourself in order to get noticed, gain customers and grow your business.

Successful and unsuccessful customer relationships

Customer relationships describe how a company engages in communication. It involves overcoming short-term challenges and developing long-term solutions that ensure a successful customer relationship. The goal is always to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

Customer service and customer relationships are not the same thing. Customer service is a reactive function-the company provides customer service in response to actions (e.g., questions, complaints). Customer relations includes both reactive and outbound functions - the company responds to customer requests for assistance and takes action on its own to improve future engagement. Customer relationships are proactive, with the goal of creating a better experience. Improving customer relationships means the company will have higher retention and return rates. Customers are more likely to stop buying a company's products or services if they have an unsuccessful relationship with it. Instead, they may forgive mistakes to a company that puts in the effort to create satisfying relationships. According to one study, a 5% higher customer retention rate can increase company profits by 25%, so there is a clear financial incentive to build a positive relationship.

What's more, maintaining a good relationship with customers over time makes it harder for competitors to get their attention. Regular customers are more likely to buy than potential customers, making customer loyalty extremely valuable.

It's worth remembering that most dissatisfied customers won't complain about a bad relationship experience; they simply won't return to make another purchase. As a result, it can be difficult to tell when customers are dissatisfied with a company's brand. Investing in customer relationships can prevent the relationship from ending unexpectedly. Creating open communication channels that invite feedback can help identify issues. Creating a better experience can also influence purchasing decisions more effectively than advertising and marketing.

Online reviews - they are important

Today, most consumers look for information about products before buying. Recent studies have indicated how customers perceive online reviews and how this translates into purchasing decisions.

For example, researchers at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London recently looked at how online reviews affect product perception. In the study, 18 participants first rated a number of Amazon products based on image and description alone. The researchers were then asked to rate the products a second time, but instead they were shown an image along with multiple user reviews that displayed the average score and total number of reviews. It turns out that respondents' opinions were clearly influenced by the reviews, as their second round of ratings fell somewhere between their first rating and the average of the reviews. Most importantly, when products had a large number of reviewers, participants were more likely to give ratings consistent with the review score, especially if they lacked confidence in their initial ratings. As the study showed, people leaned more toward group consensus when their confidence in the overall quality of the product was low and the review pool was large.

In other research, Northwestern found that products with near-perfect scores can sometimes seem too good to be true. "Across product categories, we found that purchase probability tended to peak with ratings in the 4.0 - 4.7 range and then begin to decline as ratings approached 5.0," - reads the report. In addition to this, Northwestern also detailed other ways in which negative reviews can help a product. According to the study, displaying at least five online reviews, positive or negative, makes you 270% more likely to buy a product than a product with no reviews.

They write badly and talk badly - now what?

Many businesses take the time to set up accounts on review apps, but never respond to customers who take the time to post a review themselves. This is a mistake, but also an opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

When you respond to all reviews - both positive and negative - customers notice. It's worth remembering that for every person who leaves a review, there are probably hundreds or even thousands who read reviews without commenting. Comments from an official brand account are therefore noticed by both current and potential future customers. Even with negative reviews, it's a good idea to make a good impression by responding in a positive, polite way, especially early on in the brand's development.

Anyone who has spent even a little time reading negative product reviews has probably come across business owners and managers who respond to negative reviews in an emotional way. Online reputation management is a real challenge for some business owners because they respond to criticism immaturely, taking it personally and responding in a fit of anger. Angrily attacking critics will only damage a company's reputation and scare away potential customers. In the digital age, information spreads quickly, and even one extremely aggressive response can go viral and ruin a company. Another mistake is getting defensive in the comments and trying to undermine a negative customer experience. This may seem like a good idea at first. After all, no one wants people to read a negative review and think that everything written there is the honest truth. Still, a customer's experience shouldn't be undermined, even if they're wrong. When a brand reacts defensively to negative product reviews, it looks like they are making excuses. This may not be true, but the potential customer who is reviewing the reviews doesn't know that. The appropriate response is to apologize for the bad experience and try to repair the relationship. If the customer has a problem because of a defective part of the product, let them know how to contact the company for repair or replacement. If he is upset because of unhelpful service, you can apologize and offer him a discount on his next purchase.

Even if such a customer reacts negatively to the offer or doesn't respond at all, the brand shows everyone who reads these comments that it represents a professional company that is committed to pleasing its customer base.

Negative comments can build customer relationships just as well as positive ones. It's just important that there aren't too many of them - a brand shouldn't be crystal clear, but at some point negative feedback stops building credibility and starts taking a toll on your image.