More and more diners are using online restaurant reviews to make decisions about which eatery they choose. Increasing your restaurant reviews online can help grow your business and attract more new customers. There is tremendous business value in maintaining a glowing online brand reputation. How can you encourage more customers to leave positive reviews and boost your online reputation?
1. Offer Customers an Exceptional Dining Experience
It seems obvious, but the easiest way to get great reviews is to provide great service. Offering great food in an enjoyable environment with excellent service will naturally generate positive restaurant reviews. Truthful reviews from customers are an essential source of business intelligence. Making it easy for guests to provide feedback will give restaurant owners and managers the information they need to address any issues and keep focus on the strategies that are working well.
Strong customer service is key to improving guest satisfaction and encouraging great reviews:
- Create a comprehensive staff training program
- Empower staff to resolve issues
- Foster a team-oriented approach
- Address both positive and negative feedback quickly and appropriately
When your team works together effectively and prioritizes the guest experience, you create the perfect recipe for positive reviews.
2. Ask for Feedback to Increase Restaurant Reviews Online
As part of asking guests if they are enjoying their meal, encourage customers to leave a Google restaurant review or use a QR code for a direct link. Work with any customers who are having a less-than-ideal dining experience on the spot to make sure they leave happy rather than resorting to a negative review of your restaurant.
3. Communicate with Your Followers on Social Media
Having a landing page on your restaurant website to provide reviews will allow you to highlight the positive ones and take care of any concerns before they reach large-scale restaurant review sites. Engage with your followers on Facebook and Twitter, and use these platforms to offer links not just to your Google business listing but to widely used restaurant review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor.
4. Respond To All Online Restaurant Reviews
Take the time to respond to positive restaurant reviews with a few words that show how much you value your customers and their feedback. Responding to negative reviews shows that they are taken seriously. Even if the review is unreasonable, a helpful and professional response allows readers to draw that conclusion for themselves. If you are able to resolve the issue, the customer is more likely to amend or change their negative review into a positive or neutral one.
5. Use Positive Reviews to Limit the Impact of Negative Ones
Your restaurant star rating is calculated based on an algorithm that seeks to eliminate fake or false reviews. The rating system computes your overall rating based on the volume of positive versus negative reviews, further demonstrating the significant impact of online reviews on restaurant success. It is worth the effort to actively work on increasing your positive restaurant reviews to make a few negative ones less impactful on your online reputation for a great dining experience.
Actively Manage Your Online Restaurant Reputation
Staying on top of your reviews on multiple platforms is challenging and time-consuming. The most efficient way to manage and increase your restaurant reviews online, on Google and other major restaurant review sites, is to use comprehensive online review management software. With a single dashboard and alerts to new feedback across multiple major review sites, ReviewInc allows fast responses in an easy-to-use, real-time interface.
ReviewInc allows restaurant owners and managers to check on new reviews and respond quickly to encourage positive reviews and take action to improve every customer’s dining experience. Protect your brand reputation and highlight the style and substance of your eatery with proactive online review management. ReviewInc will help you increase your business with review management software that keeps you on top of your ratings and aware of your growing successes.
