Reviews Talk to the World. Feedback Talks to You.
Most growing businesses keep an eye on their Google reviews. Some also run a customer feedback program. The very best companies use the two together, because each one shows you something the other can't.
Think of it this way. A review is a customer expressing their view to others. Sometimes the reviewer thinks that they are either helping other people avoid the same mistake that they made or benefit from their good fortune. And sometimes they are trying to reward or punish the company that they have reviewed. In all cases they are broadcasting their point of view: it’s a one-to-many communication.
Your feedback program is one of your customers talking to you. They want you to hear how you are doing. They want to help by saying either do more of the same or look at this area, you need to do better here. It’s a one-to-one conversation. It is personal and valuable between your customer and you. Like every one-to-one conversation, it is private and often very different to what would be said in public.
The most customer-focused companies know that they need to hear both types of conversation.
Reviews: What Customers Tell the World
With reviews, customers decide what to talk about and what they want to share with others. They've decided their experience was worth telling other people about.
That makes reviews powerful. They're often what your next customer reads before they ever pick up the phone or visit. But most reviews come from people who feel strongly, either delighted or annoyed. Plenty of your regular customers will never write one and their thoughtful feedback can be lost.
So, reviews tell you about your reputation. They don't give you the full picture of how you're doing.
Feedback: What Customers Tell You
Your feedback program builds on this input.
You choose when to ask and what to ask, often straight after a visit, an appointment or an invoice. Or you choose to run a regular check-in on your overall relationship with an annual or twice-yearly request. Your customer answers privately, and they expect you to do something with what they say.
Because you control the timing, you can link each answer to a specific job, team, location or service. You can track it month by month and spot a problem early, before it costs you a customer. And you hear from far more of your customers than the handful who post online.
Why One on Its Own Isn't Enough
A customer can score you 5 out of 5 on your survey and never write a review. Another can be happy nine times out of ten, then leave a stinging review after one bad day.
Those aren't contradictions. They're the same relationship, seen from two angles. Look at only one and you'll miss half the story.
Five Ways to Use Them Together
You don't need a big system to make this work. Start here.
- Use feedback to find what's really going on. When scores dip, check which location, team or step is behind it, then read the comments.
- Use reviews to see what the public sees. Read your latest reviews and note the words customers use about you, good and bad. Notice the emotions behind them. That's your reputation in their own language.
- Watch the gap. Good survey scores but poor reviews? One specific issue may be pushing people to go public. Good reviews but slipping survey scores? A problem is building that hasn't hit your reputation yet. Fix it now, while it's still private.
- Compare themes, not numbers. A 4.6-star rating and a survey score aren't measuring the same thing. Look for the same praise or the same complaint turning up in both.
- Respond to both. Reply to reviews publicly and politely. Follow up privately with anyone who gives you a low score. Both show customers you're listening.
How to Explain It to Your Team
Keep it simple. Reviews tell us what customers choose to say about us in public. Feedback tells us what customers tell us privately when we ask. Reviews help us look after our reputation. Feedback helps us improve what we deliver. Together, they give us the clearest picture of our customers we can get.
Listen in Both Directions
Every review and every survey response is a customer giving you their time. Listen to both and you'll understand your customers better than any single number ever could.
iAssistYU takes care of both. It connects to the systems you already use, sends your surveys automatically, and displays your performance. You can add your reviews quickly and easily to your data set of survey responses. And then Holly, our AI CX expert, takes over to analyze both types of feedback and, most importantly, direct you with an action plan specifying which areas to focus on next.
Ready to start listening? Visit iAssistYU.com to see how your business can start today.
About iAssistYU
iAssistYU.com is an AI-powered customer feedback platform built for growing, multi-location businesses. It automates how you capture, analyze and act on feedback, integrating seamlessly with your existing CRM or accounting software. iAssistYU works with your reviews and survey data in combination to give your business big-company insight without the big-company price tag.