Google Launches Review Response Notifications

Google has announced the launch of review response notifications - a new Google My Business feature. When business owners respond to reviews, Google will now send an email notification to the customer to inform them of the response. Here's the update as it was posted on the Google community forum :

"We’re launching notifications to inform your customers when you respond to their reviews, with plans to release mobile push notifications at a later date.

When businesses respond to, or update responses to customer reviews, the customer now receives an email notification. The business’s response is published immediately and 5 minutes later, the notification is sent. This 5 minute delay allows time for the merchant to make any corrections to their response after submitting.

The notification email informs the customer of a reply to their review, and contains a link to a page with the full owner response."

Google also included an image demonstrating what the notification will look like for your customers:

With this small update, Google has drastically increased how important it is for local businesses to respond to online reviews. Review responses were always important - it's been shown that responding to reviews increases your overall star rating AND increases business revenue. Now that Google will be notifying customers of review responses, it will become even more important for your business to respond to every review, in addition to your efforts to get more Google reviews.

Consumers will come to expect review responses from business owners

As customers become more and more aware of if and when businesses are responding to their reviews, they will come to expect this communication from the businesses they choose to interact with. Businesses who consistently respond to reviews will now get even more exposure and attention paid to this level of customer service. Businesses who don't respond to reviews will increasingly be seen as actively ignoring or even not caring about customer feedback.

Thanking a customer for a good review is no longer a simple comment on a public review, it is now a direct message emailed to that customer. And responding to a bad review may be even more effective as the customer will get your response immediately and directly in his/her inbox.

Review responses can earn you new business

It's common sense that responding to reviews will make your business seem more attentive, responsive, and a provider of excellent customer service. Most business owners assume, rightly so, that responding to reviews will help make happy customers more loyal, and can help turn the ship around when a customer is unhappy.

But review responses have a more technical impact on your business as well - review responses can affect how Google ranks your business in online search. The frequency and content of your review responses can have a positive impact on your search engine rankings, which will result in more visits to your website, calls to your business, and requests for driving directions. It can also give you a leg up on competitors who may not be actively responding to customer reviews.

Many business owners do not respond to reviews regularly

Unfortunately, responding to reviews is something most business owners don't do regularly. Due to resource and time restraints, review responses are often pushed to the bottom of the small business priority list.

Since review responses will quickly become a very visible action, it's important to put a system in place to consistently respond to your reviews - both positive and negative.

If you don't currently use a reputation management system, make sure your Google My Business listing is claimed and verified so you can access your admin account to respond to reviews.

If you're a Get More Reviews customer, you can respond to Google reviews and Facebook reviews directly from inside your dashboard! This eliminates the need to log in to Google My Business or Facebook to post a review response.

Contact our support team to turn on our review response feature if you don't have it currently enabled in your account.

If you haven't been consistently responding to customer reviews, it's not too late to start!

• Delegate someone on your team (or delegate yourself) to respond to customer reviews regularly.
• Ensure you've claimed and verified all your review site listings so you are aware of new reviews when they come in (or use a reputation management system to notify you of new reviews).
• If you use a reputation management system like Get More Reviews, make sure you have review responses enabled so you can quickly and easily manage review responses from inside one account.