Yelp Review Management

Since Yelp is one of the leading review sites, it has an authority that often plays a major part in the decision making process of a potential customer. This provides businesses with a small window of opportunity to get their potential clients to their business, but even more importantly, it builds a certain level of trust between the client and the business. Seeing the importance of online reviews and the level of trust that it builds for local businesses, a business would ignore these valuable customer evaluations at their own peril. Here, we are going to take a look at the importance of Yelp reviews and the best practices for Yelp review management.

Anyone can add their business on Yelp. The confirmation is given via a phone verification system whenever a listing has been added to Yelp’s database. 

The business owner is provided with a code to verify their business and claim their page, and to receive email alerts whenever a person leaves a review on their business. Yelp also offers other interesting services such as allowing business owners to view how many people have visited their Yelp page. It is advised to read the fine print and use Yelp for business owners instead of making a Yelp account as a regular user. 

This is a neat tool that’s provided by Yelp and allows the business owner to privately email each reviewer, whether they’ve left a negative or positive review on the site. 

The only downside is that business owners are only allowed to send each reviewer a single email until the reviewer writes back. Yelp uses this strategy as a spam prevention tool, since the review site places the same level of importance on the reviewers, as it does on the businesses being reviewed. But, if a reviewer wishes to, they are allowed to block a business from sending them emails. 

There is only one appropriate way of replying to a negative review on Yelp and that is, by addressing the issue with the reviewer either via a personal email or by posting a comment under the disgruntled customer’s review. The first option makes it easier for a business owner to get a good idea of what the reviewer was trying to say in their negative review, while the second option allows others to read your response, and make their own judgement. It is advised to always handle a negative review with care since it is a very delicate process, and the best way to handle negative reviews on Yelp should be on a case to case basis, since every review left by a Yelper should be treated individually.

This is why keeping track on your business’s Yelp reviews is so important. Because, from time to time, all businesses have to deal with negative reviews from customers, or somebody who is just impossible to satisfy. But, what about the reviews on your business that are untrue. It could be because someone has an axe to grind with you and is leaving a negative review that also happens to be false as well, in an attempt to hurt the reputation of your business. In such cases, Yelp allows users to flag the reviews as inappropriate, if they disagree with the negative comments. It is also advised to business owners not to embark on an online flame war with that person which could lead to negative consequences. 

Unfortunately, Yelp does not provide a sure fire way of identifying the real reviews from the fake, but it does have a pretty good filter in place, which is being constantly improved. That being said, in certain cases, Yelp does allow business owners to delete such reviews. 

And, the only way of staying abreast with the amount of positive or negative reviews a business receives is by constantly monitoring Yelp reviews and practicing better Yelp review management techniques. For entrepreneurs, Yelp reviews does not have to be a source of anxiety. The aforementioned tips should help businesses owners avoid any angst due to bad Yelp reviews, develop their online presence, build a worthy customer base, and be ahead of the curve in their business niche.