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Yelp reviews are so much more than an outlet for customers. They’re a meaningful source of feedback that can help you build trust with customers, showcase your values, and improve your business. According to e-commerce expert and former Shopify executive Alok Ahuja, reviews are also the barometer for his company’s success.
As the CEO and co-founder of the Canada-based courier service Trexity, Alok enables small businesses to offer same-day local delivery. And while Trexity’s mission is taking goods from point A to point B, Alok says he constantly improves the service based on feedback from his stakeholders: small business owners, end customers, and delivery drivers.
“When you care about what your customers are saying, you’re instantly, deeply rooted into the experience, but also you’re bettering yourself as a company,” he says. “Feedback is more than just an opinion. It is a direction.”
Hear more from Alok on his review response strategy:
How Alok uses reviews
Feedback and focus groups are a part of every decision we and I make as a company. It’s so important to stay in touch with making sure you’re actually solving a problem that needs to be solved… We [give end customers a] survey that says: “How did we do on a scale of one to five? Give us one line of feedback on something that might’ve gone wrong.”
We aggregate all of this end-customer feedback in real time and then present it to our merchants on what we call the merchant report card, and we tell them, “This was your rating out of five, and here’s all the feedback your customers gave you.” And it’s that feedback that our development team and product team reads every single day to figure out what we need to do with our product and our platform.
Focus on reviews that can help you improve
Try to hone in on the [reviews] where you know you can improve as a business. My advice to business owners: Anything that’s three stars or less, you have to read. Go to the [most critical] places of your feedback. Go to the ones where actual shoppers have constructive feedback on something that you can do to improve. If they truly care about your business or the value of goods that they’re getting, they’ll give you real feedback.
Take time to sit with feedback before responding
Never make knee-jerk decisions on the feedback that you read. Take the time to make smart decisions instead. Because I’ll tell you right now: I used to make those knee-jerk decisions when I was in my twenties, and they never panned out well. Just take the time, absorb it, and if they enrage you because the feedback is so hardcore, you’ve got to calm down before you make any decisions… I let it sit there, and then I bring it to my team on either Monday or Tuesday, a couple days after the weekend, and say: “What do you guys think of this? What can we do around this?” Then you can really start to brainstorm ideas [about how to improve].
Start a dialogue with critical reviewers
Try to create a dialogue with the person who put up the 1-star review. We always reply—even if it’s a good one—and we try to start a dialogue. That is an opportunity for you to go offline and show the humility that you have as a company for the issue that they went through because of something you couldn’t deliver on or that’s something you couldn’t provide them with. Then once it’s settled offline, you can go back and say: “I’m so glad we figured this out. Your feedback has allowed us to get better as a company.”
These lessons come from an episode of Behind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast. Listen below to hear more from Alok and Emily, or visit the episode page to read more, subscribe to the show, and explore other episodes.
The information above is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice and may not be suitable for your circumstances. Unless stated otherwise, references to third-party links, services, or products do not constitute endorsement by Yelp.
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