For most small business owners, a large portion of their new business comes from word-of-mouth. Many of these business owners don't ask for or promote online reviews or feedback - the typical theory is that a bad review will impact them negatively, so they would rather have no reviews than risk even one negative comment.
But here's the thing - your customers ARE talking about you. Customers are telling their positive and negative stories about you to their friends and family. They do this at the gym, the dentists office and at parties. Just this morning, I was talking to a friend at the gym who'd injured his leg and needed a good physical therapist. I happen to be seeing a PT for my own leg injury, and I was able to give a very high recommendation to my friend in person. Getting that recommendation from a trusted source (we're similar ages and are both physically active) goes a long way.
I was able to equally give less high recommendations to a few other PT's I've seen in the past, and why I didn't like them as much as the PT I'm seeing now. All of this conversation happened in person and none of the physical therapists in question will ever know what I said, or that I either gained them (or lost them) a potential customer by my comments. For the PT's I didn't like as much, it's highly likely that my feedback could be valuable to them if they'd heard it directly from me. But they have no idea.
In the context of running a small business, what you don't know can hurt you. We put too much emphasis on the impact of a negative review on our online reputation and future business potential. Those sensational stories about people getting sued for giving negative online reviews? Those people are telling all their friends about that business offline as well as online. They're likely calling state agencies to file complaints and the Better Business Bureau. They also post negative reviews online because it makes them feel better - but how do you know the impact on your business? Even worse, what about the person who's really upset and does all these things except for posting a negative online review? Is that somehow better for the business owner? This is of particular relevance if your business is serving a local market - all the people this disgruntled customer is talking to are likely other locals, who will then talk to others, and so on. Negative reviews can go "viral" offline as well as online - but because we can see the online reviews, we're more concerned about them.
Your customers are talking about you. Do you really know what they're saying? If you don't, that's a bigger issue to your business growth than a negative online review. At least then you know what it is that customer's likely telling other people offline.
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