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What to Do When Everybody’s a Reviewer: Trader Joe’s and Yelp

Previously on Lost, I wrote about some reactive strategies that business owners should use in responding to negative feedback on social review Web sites like Yelp (”What NOT to Do When Everybody’s a Reviewer.”)

A lot of times, when businesses think of social media, they only think about the reactive stuff, usually after hearing horror stories of businesses getting trashed online. Consequently, they think of blogs and social media as tools of the enemy: things to be monitored closely, with a well-rehearsed fire drill in place should anything bad happen.

Of course, you should be ready to respond to criticism and negative reviews online. However, if you just look at reactive strategies, you’re missing out on the potential of social media to let your customers promote and market your business. And by having your customers genuinely like you and talk about you, it’s more authentic than any advertising campaign you could do.

An example of this is Trader Joe’s, a hip supermarket chain that started in California and is spreading across the country. This is a supermarket — a supermarket — that’s inspired a level of cult-like devotion, some of which you can see in the Trader Joe’s Fan community, where people talk about the company, share experiences, and swap recipes that use TJ products. Really.

Perhaps this is something of an extreme case, but it goes to show how far some people will go to help you when they like you.

Here are some things that you can do to help turn your customers into evangelists (or at least positive reviewers):

* Talk to Your Customers… in Person and Online: If someone gives you a good review, thank them. If someone gives you a bad review, acknowledge, apologize, and address their complaint. (Use a light touch — just like you wouldn’t harass someone in person, don’t pester them online.) And remember, you can talk to your customers even when you’re not talking about your business, or trying to sell them something.

* Tell People What’s Going On: You don’t necessarily have to have a blog or Twitter feed for your business (though you should ask if it’s right for you), and you don’t have to open your books or air your dirty laundry, but you can use your Web site and your other customer touches to let people know what’s going on — especially if it’s stuff they can use. And I don’t just mean in a “on-sale this week” kind of way — people are generally curious about what goes on in a business (even if they don’t want to see all the details of the sausage getting made).

* Gather Intelligence: Find out how people are finding out about you. This includes checking your Web site metrics to see how people are getting to your site, as well as asking new customers how they found you (in addition to the standard, “Did you find everything you were looking for?”)

* Encourage Reviews: Don’t be afraid to link out to places where people can find reviews of your business. Think about ways you can encourage people to post reviews of their own (Maybe putting “Enjoy your visit? Consider posting a review,” on the front door of your store or Web site, or on the bottom of the receipt — I’m spitballing here.)

* Train Your Frontline Staff: Remind your customer-facing employees — cashiers, waitstaff, managers, sales reps, whoever — that everyone they come in contact with is a potential reviewer. Up until now, customers who had bad experiences might spread some negative word-of-mouth, but things like blogs and social review sites give them a much bigger potential audience. Make sure your employees know who to turn to, to keep small problems from turning into big ones.

Your staffers don’t have to be social media experts — they just have to do what they’re supposed to do: Provide a good customer experience.

What did I miss? What other steps can the small business owner take to help take advantage of social reviews online?

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