Reviews establish trustworthiness of a business and its products & services and also indicate credibility when people see your listings on search engines like Google as well as aggregators and marketplaces like Amazon. Fierce competition has kept e-commerce businesses on their toes to stay relevant in the market, carve a niche & fathom the customer sentiment through their feedbacks and reviews.

We recommend encouraging Google Review submissions as much as possible. Not only do positive reviews bestow credibility, but they also tell Google your company’s website is worth redirecting searchers to. It also gives the customers a way to express their opinions (& recommendations) about the products they have bought online. Google user reviews help to gauge how a product/service is faring among its users.

GOOGLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WHY IT MATTERS

What is Google Customer Reviews?

Google Customer Reviews is Google’s free program which enables it to collect valuable feedback from customers. It allows the customers to rate & review their entire shopping experience with Google’s partners who participate in the program.

The feedback provided by the customers is used by Google to determine the seller ratings of merchants. Obviously, the higher the rating, the more credible the merchant is.

Importance of Google Customer Reviews

  • Successfully leveraging Google Customer Reviews helps businesses build ‘social proof’ which draws more customers. It creates a positive image of your brand among people, a brand which they can trust & which can provide satisfying shopping experience.
  • Customer feedback is vital to direct product improvement. The users of the product know the product inside out and they can help you identify shortcomings which may need patching.
  • As a customer, the ratings garnered by the brands help you decide which brand to trust when buying a product or service. The star rating of a brand is a good indication of its trustworthiness and a good rating comes from a lot of positive reviews.
  • The good feedback collected through Google Customer Reviews enhances the product rating which in turn appears in both organic as well as paid results.
  • You can display your website’s aggregate rating as a badge which is, in a way, a proof of the authority of your business, instills trust among potential customers and drives conversion.

So how do I leave a Google Customer Review?

  • After the customer has received the order placed by him/her online, Google sends them an email which asks them to opt-in to receive a survey specifically designed to gather their purchase experience.
  • Those customers who choose to opt-in are presented with the survey which consists of a star rating (1 to 5 stars) system. In case the customer wishes to share more about the shopping experience, space for comments is provided.
  • Finally, after the customer hits ‘submit’, Google aggregates the survey information furnished therein to form a star rating for the seller (or its product which you bought) which in turn is displayed on their website and also comes up in the organic and paid search results.

Google collects the customer’s order ID, email, Google account information, country, order delivery date and GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) included in the customer’s order. GTIN helps to identify the product the review data pertains to.

If the customer was signed in to their Google Account when the survey was sent, then the review provided by the customer gets associated with that account and it also appears publicly in Google’s Service across the web where others can view it.

For Businesses

If you wish to collect customer feedback about your product/service, you should have a Google Merchant account. Then, you need to add a few optional lines of code (which must be added to both your desktop and mobile sites) to integrate the survey opt-in module in your website.
A sample of the survey opt-in code is shown ahead.

GOOGLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WHY IT MATTERS

This will enable Google to display the Google Customer Review survey invite to customers when they hit ‘checkout’ on your website.

You can even customize the placement of this survey invite although it is advised to place it at the page’s center.

GOOGLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WHY IT MATTERS

You can even modify the survey opt-in to garner reviews specifically about the product. For doing so, you’ll need to add the GTIN of the product in the JavaScript snippet on your website. Here is a detailed guide to integrate the survey opt-in module to your website.

What can I do with submitted Google user reviews?

Well, here are few suggestions for you.

  • Put them on your website: If you have an abundance of reviews about your products/services, the folks at the best digital marketing companies would definitely suggest, for starters, to publish those reviews on your website.
    It will help you garner customers’ trust & boost the transparency of your business.
  • Business listings: Customers’ confidence in your brand increases if you include the Google Customer Reviews in all your business listings across the web on channels like Google My Business, Bing Places, Yahoo Localworks, Yelp, NextDoor etc.
  • Find your niche & fortify it: Use the reviews to find where your brand belongs. The reviews coming from the customers from a broad spectrum of verticals will enable you to identify where the majority of your customer base is. Once you have identified the verticals, strengthen your brand’s bond with the customers already present on those verticals.
  • Reinforce your SMM campaigns: As leads & customers are flocking the social media, it only makes sense to incorporate the Google user reviews in your SM marketing campaigns & leverage SM as a marketing tool. The team of experts at General Data, a digital marketing agency, can assist you to demonstrate the credibility & reputation of your business to potential customers.
  • Include them into product roadmap: Incorporate the pain points raised in the Google customer reviews in your product roadmap. This helps to improve the market-fit of your product.
  • Identify improvement areas: There are chances that your loyal users would’ve developed an expertise in your product’s features akin to that of your product managers. Such users’ reviews would give you priceless insights & new ideas which hitherto might have been unexplored by you or your teams. It would help your brand, occasionally, to stop brainstorming and heed to (& implement) those ideas/insights.
  • Use the feedback to drive your team: Appreciation motivates like nothing else! If you come across a customer’s praise about a product’s feature, do convey that compliment to the team member who created that feature & ensure that the team knows it too. On the other hand, if the customer is griping about a feature, let the team member who created that feature directly talk to the dissatisfied customer. It will make the member feel in charge & also encourage him/her to take ownership in future.
  • Prevent the churn: A negative feedback/review means the customer has expressed willingness to consider your brand and is outright willing to switch to another brand! Don’t lose this opportunity to check the customer churn by sweeping the negative feedback under the rug. Correctly addressing the issues underlying them can help you to convert the disgruntled customers into your brand’s vocal advocates. Take this as a chance to bolster customer relationship, as we discuss ahead.

Handling negative customer reviews

Although negative customer reviews can be detrimental to business, panic should not be the first response to those reviews.

The ideal response to a negative feedback/review is to not get one, but that is not just utopian but also unavoidable.

Experts at internet marketing services advise to consider those reviews as opportunities to demonstrate your company’s willingness & dedication to serve customers in the best way.

  • It is crucial to acknowledge the negative review and get in touch with the concerned unsatisfied customer as soon as possible, ideally within 24 hours. If it is not acknowledged quickly, anyone reading it will end up believing it or forming an ill-informed opinion about your brand.
  • Identify these aspects:
    • Research about the customer (first-timer or a regular patron)
    • What did they buy and when?
    • Pull details of the relevant transaction history; go through the sale related email correspondence or customer service calls, if any.
  • Respond promptly and keep to the point. Thank the customer for bringing the problem to your attention and giving you a chance to set things right. Take ownership of the issue, apologize to the customer, state how the issue will be fixed and follow through it till its resolution.

    If needed, move the conversation to your customer care department where the customer can be given better attention & in a more conducive environment. Assure them that the issue won’t be repeated in future.

    Be empathetic, pleasant & allow the customer to feel heard. It might even nudge the customer to change the review to a positive one in the end, turning into your brand ambassador.

  • Google has posting guidelines to regulate inappropriate review content. If the review contains hate speech, threats, profanity or even violence, flag it & bring it to Google’s attention for removal.
  • Advertising or spamming in reviews is not allowed. You can flag a review to Google for removal if it is marketing, say, a better deal offered by your competitor. You can also flag irrelevant (off topic) content.
  • There are people who can send-in fake reviews also. Apologize for their dissatisfaction & state that there are no records of their transaction (or of them being a customer in the first place).
  • You also have the option of submitting to Google a Google form for legal removal of a slanderous review. Positive reviews must outnumber the negative ones, so see to it that fraudulent reviews are removed.

Remember that it is not just about a particular negative feedback or review. Prospective customers go through these reviews & assess how you have addressed the issues.

It tells them about your reliability if something goes haywire. They see if you are leaving customers happy and satisfied. It is all about customer experience (CX) in the end.

Assisting businesses to leverage the power of Google Customer Reviews is accomplished daily by the experts at General Data. Our team can help increase the online visibility of your business & reach your business goals efficiently. Feel free to contact us to get a detailed account of the range of services (like SEO, DM, information management etc.) which we provide to organizations, enabling them to excel in their businesses.

The days are long gone when office spaces had to deal with rows upon rows of filing cabinets to store their paperwork containing business information. Document digitalization services have reduced the effort, space as well as the time needed to create information, store it, update it, and grant someone access to it or take backup of info which has decade worth of content in size!

HELPING YOUR BUSINESS GO DIGITAL

Professionals have leveraged technology to evolve extremely efficient business processes. It has led to development of new digital business tools & information management services, small and big, to cater to varying & mutating business needs arising with time.

In this article, we briefly discuss how technology has touched upon and affected businesses & after that we delve into document management systems & their impact on today’s corporate.

What Is a Document Management System (DMS)?

A document management system automates the way of organizing, securing, capturing, digitizing, tagging, approving & completing business files’ tasks. DMS enables a company to manage large repositories of data and documents.

It is a central point from where all digitally created documents, spreadsheets, images etc. can be accessed. Not just that, you can regulate access rights themselves in DMS.

According to a Bitkom study, only 19% of small and medium-sized businesses have the right software in place to digitalize their office work. For large companies, this figure is already at 86%.

24X7 availability of digitalized documents (i.e. digital information) from a central point is the most vital asset for any organization. A good DMS ensures that precisely.

How Does a Document Management System (DMS) Digitalize Your Business?

DMS is a huge boon for any organization dealing with information management. Here are some of the ways in which a document management system digitalizes your business:

  • Every business process uses or generates one or many documents in some way. A DMS replaces the paper version of generating or exchanging documents by processing them completely electronically. For instance, you can share just a link of the digital document in the DMS with other employees and whatever changes they make in it can be easily tracked. Redundant copies can be discarded swiftly.
  • Certain processes can be totally automated if there is no interruption due to use of paper. DMS eliminates these disruptions & also passes on the digital documents to other business applications like ERP system. You can create fully automated workflows e.g. for invoices, complaints & procurement.
  • Search and retrieval of a digital document is way, WAY, faster as compared to its paper equivalent. One can’t appreciate a DMS enough when it comes to saving of time in searching a decade old business document that has been, fortunately, digitalized. Talk about efficiency! Bid adieu to tedious paper searching.
  • Employees working in any shift or from any location can access the required document through DMS if they have been granted access rights for the same. Cloud connection enables cross-department teams to work flexibly with the digitalized information.
  • Paper is mortal, let’s face it. It will disappear one day no matter how strongly you make efforts to preserve it. Its info is always vulnerable to be lost. Not so with the DMS in place. Every change in a digitalized document can be tracked, the document itself can be versioned so that its integrity is never compromised.
  • Employees dealing with digitalized information through DMS from early on, are very efficient in handling digital documents. They are well aware about the functioning of this repository and often come up with improvised processes to streamline business information management.
  • A DMS is a solution for entire company. Due to its cross-departmental features, DMS offers a great synergy in processing a document through different departments. For instance, invoices pass through procurement, controlling & accounts departments and DMS unifies the respective processing mechanisms (usually compatible with ERP systems) of the departments.

General Data provides information management services as an end-to-end solution to take care of all of your business-critical paperwork/information/data/workflows. After analyzing your requirement, we combine functions from document scanning & digitization, document management solutions & records management to offer you a tailored IM (information management) Solution.

Document management system offered by General Data has features like search, upload, versioning, digital signatures, document logs, workflows, access control, LDAP & DBMS integration, security, collaboration & generation of audit reports as per internal policies.

For more info on DMS, reach out to us at GDATA.

Businesses globally are adjusting with the impact of coronavirus, weathering the onslaught of pandemic induced lockdown in one form or the other. Brands are reallocating marketing budgets for the remaining year and email marketing companies & experts are busy reevaluating and reconfiguring new marketing strategies.

TOP 6 REASONS TO VALUE EMAIL MARKETING SERVICES DURING COVID-19

With a surge like 44% more emails being sent as compared to the circumstances before pandemic’s outbreak, getting an email strategy right is now more vital for email marketing agencies. Vying desperately for consumers’ attention by sending a barrage of emails is often counter productive. It needs a more empathetic approach now, for starters, given how Covid-19 has affected lives globally.

What is Email Marketing?

Broadly speaking, email marketing is using emails to send advertisements, pitch business propositions and solicit sales to prospective or current customers. An effective email marketing strategy helps to convert prospects into customers.

Some of the best email marketing services implement such strategies which turn their customers into patrons! That should be the ultimate goal, if one pauses to reflect.

For instance, BookMyShow in India is quite actively sending emails to its customers these days, promoting various offers on booking tickets for movies awaiting releases in upcoming months.

6 Reasons To Value Email Marketing

Email marketing is a means not only to bring services to your prospects but it also sustains your presence among customers, although that has to be done sensitively now-a-days.

While the world endures lockdown, emails ensure global outreach & connection which increases the utility of email marketing. Here are 6 reasons to value email marketing:

  • Cost-effectiveness:


    It is the perfect marketing tactic for businesses due to its relatively inexpensive starting off and maintaining a marketing campaign. You can create customized campaigns at small costs for different target segments keeping in mind the buying patterns of customers now-a-days.

    Buying ad spaces in print media and time slots on TV to run your ads has greater costs, not to mention its inflexibility to accommodate tailoring in ads apropos different sets of target consumers.

  • Outreach irrespective of the pandemic:


    Email marketing services ensure your products/services are always visible & available to customers.

  • Provision of automation:


    Pandemic or no pandemic, email marketing lends well to automation. Triggers and workflows can be used to automatically send emails to consumers after they take a specific action, thereby improving the relevancy & timeliness of your campaigns. From customers’ perspective, they still get curated offers from time to time as they were getting them before Covid-19.

    Even if a customer visits your website, adds items to the cart and leaves website without making a purchase for some reasons, email automation ensures that the customer will get an email prompt to finish purchasing process or suggest help to them with respect to the purchase they abandoned.

    It helps build stronger & credible relationships.

  • Effective personalization of content amid lockdown:


    While people are engaging more with their smartphones and other gadgets for browsing products & making purchases, email marketing makes it easy to personalize the content delivered to subscribers.

    Using data collected from subscribers and leads, you can provide more personalized, relevant & actionable content. This can improve both click-through rate as well as your overall conversion rate.

    As population is segmented into containment zones in the country, you can improvise the existing, & invent new, campaigns which address the customers accordingly in their zones.

  • Easy tracking of marketing efforts:


    Email marketing metrics are easy to track and measure over time. Now that physical outlets are only open in few areas of the country, targeted email marketing will enable your business to see how many users opened your emails, how many of them clicked links in them, how many users got converted etc.This will help in course correction for business continuity as and when needed with the Covid-19 transitions.

  • Stay connected with the users:


    Email marketing services keep the users in loop about how their service providers are dealing with the pandemic, what steps they have taken to ensure their products won’t pose any threat (of infection) to consumers, what new offers they are rolling out in upcoming weeks and whether they are providing any complementary items with the purchases now (e.g. giving Covid-19 masks/hand-sanitizers free of cost with products bought).

Why Are People Opening Emails More Often Now?

As people are confined to their spaces to follow guidelines of lockdown, their interaction with gadgets has increased. Internet connected devices are the only means by which they are able to keep track of what is going on in their locality and the world.

Updates, news bulletins, reminders, official instructions etc. on websites & apps are keeping them updated of new array of services & products being offered by the businesses.
Companies are sending emails on regular intervals to users, informing them about new developments in their choice of services they used to purchase, new promotional offers that are tailored for their zones & introduction of new pricings in near future in the light of Covid-19.

General Data provides email-marketing solutions for all types of companies and objectives. With over a decade of experience, we know how to build marketing campaigns that produce results.

We offer a wide-range of tools for planning, targeting and implementing high-volume email marketing campaigns. Our team can help you design your mailer & content keeping in mind the ramifications with respect to Covid-19.

We can ready the database as required and send it out in a correct non-spammy manner so that it isn’t obtrusive like junk mail and instead is more likely to be clicked-on due to its being helpful, valuable and often tangible.

For a detailed overview of how we drive business relationships to consumers through our marketing expertise, reach out to us here.

An umbrella term for unifying diverse economic activities, ‘digital economy’ is sustained by online connections among people, businesses, processes, data & devices. It is a hyper-connected economy that utilizes Internet, mobile technology & IoT to connect businesses in the online, digital world.

DIGITAL ECONOMY: SEIZING THE BENEFITS

Digital economy has reshaped business structures, interactions, delivery of consumer services & the flow of information and goods. It has enabled the 24x7 availability of businesses & has brought together all corporate stakeholders.

Speed, transparency, ease of monitoring & global outreach – these are some of the most crucial tenets of a digital economy.

Gartner defines digitization - or digitalization - as the process of changing from analog to digital form, also known as digital enablement. Digitization takes an analog process that requires physical paperwork, in-person interaction and manual record keeping, and makes it digital. Digital processes reduce manual errors, reduce time spent, bring about transparency and enable work to happen remotely by cross-functional teams separated by geography.

It’s extremely important for companies to realize that irrespective of their size, nature of work and location, digitization – as a umbrella concept – is something that can benefit them in some way or another. Turning a blind eye to its advantages and sticking to traditional workflows, processes and ways of working is dangerous. Know that competitors will overtake you by bringing about efficiencies and process optimization by bringing about digitization of processes, workflows and infrastructure.

In addition to interactions moving away from analog technologies (snail mail, telephone calls) to digital ones (email, chat, social media), both work and leisure domains have also become digitalized. Conferences & meetings are now routinely scheduled over digital mediums, reducing the need for in-person presence and unnecessary physical infrastructure.

In the manufacturing sector, production is primarily reliant on computer controlled machines, which have revolutionized operations & throughput. With their ability to record data, fine tune production processes and speed up internal shop floor movements, they have increased process efficiency and improved data transparency.

Digital Transformation of Businesses: E-Business & E-Commerce

It refers to the implementation of organizational changes using digital technologies to drive customer centric strategic business transformation. This indicates that the enterprise gradually becomes customer-driven end-to-end. Digitization & digitalization are about digital technologies but digital transformation is focused on the customer.

Importance of Digital Transformation:

  • Consumer Insights:


    Enterprises generate a LOT of data, both structured and unstructured. Today, billions of dollars are spent trying to analyze this ‘big data’ to gain consumer insights and perform sales and trend forecasting.

  • Easier collaboration:


    • Open, multichannel communication
    • Instant access to information
    • Easy user access rights to allow viewing, editing, copying and sharing of information
    • More direct involvement of stakeholders
    • Provision of a ‘collective glance’ on projects by teams

  • Better customer experience:


    Customer feedback can be obtained quickly, actionable insights can be identified & better value can be provided to customer; faster & more specific complaint redressal of customers. CRMs and ticketing systems allow structured replies and case histories for CSRs to easily take stock of existing cases.

  • Employee empowerment:


    E.g. providing work-from-home facility to employees shows company’s trust in them & imparts great flexibility to them; allowing advance reconciliation of imminent expenses of employees through an expense management system like Zento

E-Business and E-Commerce are closely related & are the main components of a digital economy. Let us consider some interesting examples.

  • Daily Commuting:


    Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles.

  • Social Media:


    Facebook, the world’s most popular SM platform, creates no content.

  • Online Retail:


    Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory.

  • Airbnb:


    the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate (that it lists).

  • Banking:


    You don’t need to bother about filling forms at banks to withdraw or deposit money. Most banking functions today can be done through a bank’s website or mobile application (Netbanking & Phonebanking).

  • Healthcare:


    patients can get opinions from healthcare specialists online. Verified doctors and health professionals are available, reviews by patients add transparency and accountability, and the nearest medical services like hospitals, clinics and pharmacies can be found within a few clicks.

  • Entertainment:


    The BookMyShow app in India is a great platform to book tickets to movies, sports tournaments & other events, from the comfort of your home without bothering about long queues.

Era of Digital Marketing

Like a brick & mortar office of a traditional company, an online business is initially not easily known to customers and prospects. If you are going to float new online business & want to sell a unique product or service, you can’t do that in isolation. You need to make people aware of your products’ existence by doing proper online marketing.

This is where companies providing Internet marketing services come into play.

Digital marketing companies help you formulate & execute the right digital marketing strategies to promote your brand, products and/or services through digital channels.

These agencies help you identify the target customer segment, fathom their needs & position your products to them at the right time in the right way.

A digital marketing agency also helps your online business get feedback about how your brand is faring among customers in real time.

If you’d like to explore the benefits of taking your brand, products and services online, we at General Data can draw out and execute a planned strategy, in a economically prudent way. We also specialize in creating e-commerce websites on CMSs like WordPress. Also, if you have an existing website, we can develop and integrate a new store if you’re not selling online yet.

Our digital marketing solutions will help you garner more visibility, leads and sales of your products/services through SEO, SEM, SMM and other online marketing services. Reach out to us here

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