The wind is biting, the stores are stocked to the brim with tons of products on sale, and all you want to do is curl up with a thick blanket and a warm mug of hot chocolate to watch your favorite Christmas movies. We don’t blame you. Tis the season!
But, before you call it a year, we thought we would add some helpful tips to increase your brand experience in the New Year.
While this time of year often fills the air with holiday cheer, it can also bring out those pesky customers that are never satisfied with their service. You know the ones we’re talking about!
They’re the ones that spoil all your great progress on review sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. They throw their Grinchy grenade just to blow up your awesome rating!
But, fear not, we’re here to help! With a little ingenuity, you’ll be as happy as a kid on Christmas.
Here are twelve tips to help you upgrade your brand experience over the holidays and beyond. So without further ado, let’s unwrap those tips like a Red Ryder BB gun!
1. Assess their holiday cheer with NPS surveys
Let’s face it! Not all customers are jolly around the holidays. Wouldn’t it be nice to parse out the naughty from the nice?
If you’re shaking your head like Santa just asked if you’d like “a nice football,” then you already know it’s not always easy to get what you want for Christmas.
Luckily, WebPunch allows you to quickly assess your customers’ holiday cheer with NPS surveys.
Using these steps, you’ll be able to send out those surveys faster than you can say Merry Christmas!
2. Strike when the iron is hot! Use the WebPunch Mobile App to send out Review Requests.
No one likes to be left waiting, and neither do your most loyal customers. Once you know your true fans, strike when the iron is hot and send out Review Requests.
Your best opportunity to receive a rave review is when customers have their experience fresh in their minds, so make sure to follow up once you know who the promoters are in your NPS surveys.
They’re the closest thing to a year-round nice list!
Reaching out for positive feedback will help ensure you can peep those positive reviews like a gift under your Christmas tree. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving all year long.
3. Reach out to promoters and strengthen those bonds.
We often don’t need any reminders to reach out to detractors as they are our harshest critics. However, it’s often easy to overlook promoters.
As our strongest supporters, they don’t get the same attention as detractors. After all, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Nonetheless, there are many advantages to reaching out to promoters.
Here are three reasons why you should reach out to promoters:
- They are more likely to refer friends and family.
- They are more likely to write a glowing review about how you are awesome.
- In a short amount of time, you can increase your overall rating on review sites.
It sounds so simple yet is often overlooked. If you want to improve your ratings in the new year, it makes sense to give your biggest supporters some love. Their positive feedback may even change your Grinchiest of customers’ minds.
4. Create new company goals based on your passive customer feedback.
Whether we like it or not, not all presents are a home run. Unfortunately, the same thing is true with our services. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, our customers are left underwhelmed.
In these cases, it’s an excellent opportunity to learn how you can adjust and tailor your customer experience to turn your most passive customers into world-class promoters of your brand.
It all starts with reaching out:
- Address the elephant in the room
- Ask how you can improve your services to tailor to them
- Follow up with a tailored experience that meets the needs of your passive customers
After you have reached out to close the loop, you can resurvey them to make sure their needs are met. Then rinse and repeat with other passive customers.
Once you have a game plan, it’s time to turn them into New Year initiatives. Try to think of ways to empower your employees to meet these year-end initiatives and offer a little holiday bonus to those who bring the goods like Santa!
5. Tis the season to get nostalgic.
A five-star review can feel like your favorite present under the tree. That’s especially true if you’re just beginning your journey on review sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp.
The holiday season is ripe with nostalgia, but you don’t have to wait until the holidays to relive your best reviews of the year. Nope!
Get in the habit of sharing some of your favorite reviews on social media. Just make sure to use it sparingly.
Here’s an example:
Get creative and show appreciation throughout the year. It will help your customers know you care and turn your nostalgia level up to holiday levels!
6. Kill them with kindness.
No, I’m not talking about your in-laws; I’m talking about your harshest critics. Now and again, every brand will get a demanding customer who likes nothing more than to bring down your online reputation.
While it can be hard to show kindness in such matters, it’s very important to be cordial in every review response, especially the negative ones.
Why?
Because your potential customers are listening, and how you respond can sway their opinion one way or another as to whether they choose your services or not.
If you have trouble keeping your cool when your customers get you hot under the collar, no sweat! Our team of professional writers is here to help you handle your most challenging reviews with the diplomacy of an elected official.
7. Of course, you don’t always have to be so buttoned up.
The holidays are a great time to let our hair down. Even the stuffiest people can be seen singing along to Christmas carols and exchanging gifts.
That reminds me: how would you rate your brand’s personality on a scale of 1 – 10? Would you rate your personality as a stud or a dud?
If you could use a holiday hum-bug makeover, no worries! Our team of professional writers can take the most buttoned-up franchises and a touch of personality to them.
Reviews can be serious business, but there’s no rule saying you have to take it so seriously. So go on, unloosen that corporate tie, and allow our team of writers to help you find a new brand voice that’s more accessible and memorable for your customers.
8. Use Team NPS surveys to engage your employees and set new initiatives in the New Year.
Your Net Promoter Score isn’t just for customers. Nope! It’s one of the best ways to find out how to engage and retain your employees.
We all know that feedback is like a gift, and if handled smartly, can help you improve your business from top to bottom, but did you also know that NPS surveys can also apply to your teams?
Understanding areas where you could improve your team’s performance is key to keeping your most loyal customers happy. So, it just makes sense to spend time knowing how you can best support your employees.
With many companies having a difficult time keeping their businesses staffed, it’s essential to have a plan in place to help keep your best employees happy. Team NPS helps you get into the mind of your employees and better understand what makes them happy and what makes them want to leave a job.
9. Consistent and well-executed branding is like a Christmas song: it gets stuck in your head.
Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? You may notice it has a repetitive line or melody. Great branding is the same.
Whether we like it or not, our brains pick up on patterns and commit them to memory. One of the easiest ways to create consistent branding is to use similar images across all of your franchise locations.
Something as simple as having the same pictures and branding logos across all of your franchise locations can help make your brand as memorable as a Christmas tune!
Although you don’t have to stop with just images, you can create simple phrases that clients associate with your brand to help you stand out from the crowd.
If you don’t believe me, consider this — fifteen minutes could save you 15% or less on… well, you know the rest!
The point is that by creating consistent branding across multiple review site listings, you can build a memorable brand, and one aspect is your messaging.
If you’d like some help with this, WebPunch has a team of experts ready to optimize your listing pages. Need help with messaging? Our team of writers is here to help you whip up short lines that stick in your head like your favorite Christmas tune!
10. Audit your negative reviews to look for common issues.
While it can take time to go looking through all your negative reviews, it can lead to some great results!
When you read all of your negative reviews back-to-back, you start to notice patterns in customer complaints. That feedback can help you uncover new ways to make your harshest critics happy.
If you don’t have the time to do this on your own, consider having an intern put the list together and highlight repetitive phrases that they see. If you don’t feel comfortable leaving it to an intern, you can always work with a company that can help you analyze your negative reviews.
Also, WebPunch has a keyword search feature built into our feedback. Users can search by specific words or terms that come up frequently in their survey comments.
Understanding your most challenging customer’s needs helps you identify them and make adjustments to provide better customer service.
11. Audit your positive reviews each quarter to shout out your team!
Everyone loves a little recognition. One of the simplest ways to recognize what your team does well is to read it from your happiest customers.
A few things may pop out when you read your positive reviews:
- You may recognize an employee who goes above and beyond
- You might find areas where your team really shines
- You may hear about outlier moments that could become everyday occasions
- You might realize who the superstars on your team
It’s a great way to find out who would make a good fit for a management position, a larger role, or even a raise. And if not, at least at the end of the day, it feels good to read positive words about your company, and that’s a huge bonus!
12. Take time to celebrate your wins!
A great company-wide culture begins with excellent feedback. Make sure to use it to create a happy team and customers.
While analyzing feedback is important, celebrating your wins is equally important. Take ample time each year to celebrate the wins that gave your brand notoriety. Not only will it inspire your team, but it will also help you remind you why customer service is so important.
While this may seem like a throwaway tip, you’d be surprised at how many brands continue to look out onto the next horizon without appreciating the journey. So, think about some ways that you can celebrate your successes each year.
Here are some ways to celebrate your wins:
- Use social media as a way to shout out locations or employees by sharing their positive reviews on your corporate channel.
- Celebrate the Christmas season all year long with perks for your top five locations with the highest review ratings each quarter.
- Include your top ten locations with the most positive reviews in raffles for giveaways each month.
There are tons of ways to celebrate your wins. Take some time to come up with a plan for next year, and you’ll feel the Christmas spirit all year long!
Brand excellence looks good on you!
A year from today, we hope you’re looking back on all of your successes with a smile on your face. Not only that, we hope our suite of tools helps you get there quicker.
If you’re looking for brand excellence in 2022, we can help! Whether you need help optimizing your listings, automating your review responses, or having confident feedback at your fingertips, WebPunch can help you realize your goals.
So here’s to a fantastic holiday season and an amazing New Year!
Brian Joyce
Brian is a content writer, copywriter, and author. When he’s not busy writing, you can find him whistling a punk tune while performing chores, playing with his two boys, or enjoying his wife’s company. He lives in Providence with his wife, two children, and a cat with no depth perception that likes to take miscalculated jumps.
