Managing Reputation on Company Review Sites

Part
01
of three
Part
01

Managing Reputation on Company Review Sites (Glassdoor)

Key Takeaways

  • A Glassdoor survey shows that 65% of job seekers say their perception of a company improves positively after seeing the employer's responses to negative reviews.
  • Positive reviews increase the pool of job seekers considering your organization as a workplace and help attract better candidates.
  • Responding to reviews instead of ignoring them tells the prospects that the company values employees and they continuously use received feedback to find ways to improve its work environment and culture generally.
  • Responding and appreciating a reviewer for taking out time to leave a review, even if it is negative, tells the reviewer that the company is sympathetic to all feedback including unfavorable ones. This further helps establish that the company is a good place to work.

Introduction

    In this project, we have provided the best practices for managing a company’s reputation on Glassdoor. Details provided include, but are not limited to the following: how to respond to positive feedback; how to respond to negative/1-star feedback; what strategies experts recommend when responding to reviews; do’s and don’ts when responding to reviews, etc. We prioritized those that are backed up with quantitative data and/or are recommended by experts/specialists.

Don’t Ignore It, Respond

    Description

    • Glassdoor members claim to have been influenced by online reviews of companies. As a result, responding to reviews cannot be overemphasized.
    • When a company ignores and fails to respond to a negative review, for example, they miss an opportunity to address, neutralize it, and also leverage it as an avenue to positively showcase the brand to stakeholders who will read the review in the future.

    How It Should Be Done

    • Respond on time and apologize in a professional tone. Leave out emotions, address the raised issues and provide feedback on plans you have for improvement. Doing this shows the company's humble position and further iterates that the company is not perfect but it strives for continuous improvement based on received feedback.
    • Respond to the negative reviews in the right way. This tells the prospects that the company values employees and it continuously uses received feedback to find ways to improve the work environment and culture generally.
    • A survey by Glassdoor, a company reviews platform, showed that 7 out of 10 people said their opinions about a brand changed after reading the company's response to a negative review.

    Impact on the Company

    • Responses to reviews have a great impact on job seekers' perception of companies. Genuine feedback is often the kind of social proof they look out for when scouting for a new workplace. A Glassdoor survey shows that 65% of job seekers say their perception of a company improves positively after seeing the employer's responses to negative reviews.
    • Positive reviews increase the pool of job seekers considering your organization as a workplace and help attract better candidates.
    • A negative or 1-star Glassdoor feedback on a company can rob the company's reputation. This also affects the company's business operations, growth, and profitability as most consumers will rather not do business with companies that have low Glassdoor ratings.
    • Negative Glassdoor company reviews lead to higher recruitment costs, reduce the number of job seekers interested in choosing the company as a potential workplace, and the company subsequently ends up with under-qualified candidates.

Say "Thank You"

    Description

    • It is best practice to always start a review response by appreciating the reviewer for taking out time to leave a review. This singular act tells the reviewers that the company truly values their feedback and they feel more encouraged to drop more reviews.

    How It Should Be Done

    • When responding to a review, It is a great start to thank the reviewer for taking the time to share their thoughts.
    • This tells that a company is sympathetic to unfavorable reviews and further helps establish that the company is a good place to work. Even when the reviews do not give much to work with, ensure to still thank the reviewer for sharing the feedback. The company can also further reach out to them for an offline session to get their thoughts.

    Impact on the Company

    • Thanking the reviewer tells the reviewer that the company is sympathetic to all feedback including unfavorable ones. This further helps establish that the company is a good place to work.
    • Appreciating reviewers can help encourage employees to provide more reviews. This helps the company identify issues and improve accordingly.

Research Strategy

To identify the best practices provided in this research, we leveraged recruitment/job seeker platforms, company review websites, and industry expert opinions. The research team focused on the most reputable sources of information available in the public domain, including Glassdoor, Review Trackers, and Semify. We ensured that all the best practices provided in our report were the most commonly mentioned across the sources we reviewed.
Part
02
of three
Part
02

Managing Reputation on Company Review Sites (Indeed)

Key Takeaways

Introduction

The research provided information about the best practices for managing a company’s reputation on Indeed. These included identifying the two best practices [politely & quickly responding to negative feedback and never ignoring positive feedback], how each should be done or why it should not be done, and the potential impact of each best practice on the company. While we prioritized the most recent sources, we expanded our scope to include two articles from experts published in 2018 and 2019, containing key qualitative data. Details about our logic can be found in the research strategy section.

Best Practices for Managing a Company’s Reputation on Indeed

[I] Politely and Quickly Responding to Negative Feedback

[II] Never Ignore Positive Feedback

Research Strategy

To provide the requested information about the best practices for managing a company’s reputation on Indeed, we leveraged some of the most reputable and recent news/magazine articles, statistical websites, government/state publications, and press releases available in the public domain. These included Bright Local, LinkedIn, SHRM, Workplace Roundtable, Harvard Business Review, Learn Hub, and HubSpot, among others. While we prioritized the most recent sources, we expanded our scope to include two articles from experts published in 2018 and 2019, which contained key qualitative data needed to satisfy the research criteria.

Part
03
of three
Part
03

Managing Reputation on Company Review Sites (Google)

Introduction

This research provides best practices about reputation management on Google. Two best practices regarding positive and negative review management have been provided. Additionally, we have also provided the possible impact they might have on the company.

Respond Quickly/Promptly

  • It is important for businesses to respond to both positive and negative Google reviews quickly/promptly (if possible within a day).
  • According to insights from the 2018 SOCi summit, about 40 percent of customers expect a response to their reviews within 24 hours.
  • According to Localiq, responding to positive reviews in a timely manner shows that the business/company is paying attention. Additionally, responding to negative reviews in a timely manner shows that the business is proactive with customer service and also helps in giving it transparency.
  • Responding promptly conveys that the business takes complaints seriously and is dedicated to resolving them. Another reason to reply quickly is to allow potential consumers to see "both sides of the story before they make a rash decision based on a negative review."
  • Customers who feel heard can become the company's biggest evangelists. Timely responses to negative reviews also enable businesses to "regain some control of the outcome."

Be Empathetic

  • Experts believe it is important for businesses to be empathetic when responding to negative Google reviews. The response should demonstrate that the business understands the point of view of the customer.
  • In the response, the customer's concerns should be addressed directly. The aim should be to defuse the issue by expressing sympathies for whatever offended them enough to submit a negative review.
  • Being empathetic when responding to negative reviews, demonstrates the company's empathy for potential customers.
  • According to an article by UneeQ, the more businesses connect with consumers " on an emotional, empathetic level, the better they’ll trust" the business in the long run.

Research Strategy

To provide the requested information regarding best practices for managing a company’s reputation on Google, we leveraged some of the most reputable and recent news/magazine articles and press releases available in the public domain. These included Hubspot, Media Heroes, and Google, among others.

Did this report spark your curiosity?

Sources
Sources

From Part 01
From Part 02