While great customer reviews can heave sales, bad reviews can hurt them -- those are obvious correlations. But did you lot know that there is a ratio between skillful and bad reviews fifty-fifty more important than the reviews themselves? It's truthful, and information technology could make or break your success.

Understanding how customers collaborate with your brand and the customer experience you lot create is vital in your success. Consider the post-obit:

  1. When customers are unhappy, there's a 91 percentage risk they won't practice business with a company again (Lee Resources).

  2. Dissatisfied customers typically tell ix to 15 other people near their experience; some tell 20 or more (White House Office of Consumer Affairs).

  3. A negative customer experience is the reason 86 per centum of consumers quit doing business with a company (Customer Experience Touch Report).

  4. Skillful customer experiences lead 42 percent of consumers to purchase again (Zendesk Customer Service Written report).

Negative customer experiences lead to bad reviews, and a bad review tin can exercise serious damage--the kind that takes more than a good review to fix. Continue reading to get the theory backside the good-to-bad review ratio, and learn how y'all can use it in your favor.

The ratio revealed

Here's the ratio: It takes roughly 40 positive customer experiences to disengage the impairment of a single negative review. The ratio is derived from a combination of human behavior, math, and logic. Here's how I discovered it:

  1. A customer who has a negative experience is highly probable to share that feel by leaving a bad review.

  2. A client who has a positive experience, on the other mitt, is unlikely to leave a practiced review. In my experience, simply one in 10 happy customers leaves a good review.

  3. Your company or product rating (typically out of five stars) reflects an overall boilerplate of good and bad reviews. So if your goal is to maintain an overall rating of four stars, y'all'll need four five-star reviews to brand up for every i-star review.

  4. Bold that just 1 of every x happy customers leaves a positive five-star review, and knowing that it takes four five-star reviews to make up for each ane-star review, you can figure it takes twoscore positive customer experiences to brand upwardly for a unmarried bad review.

All of this makes for a good-to-bad review ratio that is virtually impossible to ignore. I've witnessed this immediate with my company, and it increases the importance of getting great reviews by providing swell customer experiences.

Nifty client experiences are priceless

There are myriad ways that positive customer experiences and ratings can benefit your business. Hither are just a few.

  1. Increased sales. In a report done by Zendesk, 88 percent of customers read an online review that influenced their ownership decision.

  2. Make reputation. Skilful reviews amp up your brand'south reputation without any additional piece of work on your end.

  3. Free marketing. Satisfied customers provide valuable discussion-of-mouth marketing and ofttimes prove to exist your biggest advocates. According to a study by American Express, 42 percent of consumers said that a recommendation from a family unit fellow member or friend would influence their purchase more than than a sale or promotion.

  4. Product and company validation. If you're raising money, investors and partners will unquestionably look at your ratings and reviews. A stiff rating affirms that you have a not bad company that is worth investing in.

  5. Promotional textile.Great reviews tin be used as testimonials on your website, in your marketing creatives, and as a part of your social media marketing campaigns.

In that location's only one solution

If a single bad review can undo the value of 40 good customer experiences, and then the best solution is to focus on client satisfaction. If it isn't already, customer happiness should be just equally important to your business as the product or service itself.

Here are three keys to client happiness.

  1. Product quality. Your product, service, or app needs to provide the value you promise in a reliable fashion. It should work so well that 99 percent of your customers never phone call customer service.

  2. Customer service. Great customer service not only prevents bad reviews, it besides helps define your brand. The keys to the customer service equation include competent and compassionate reps, a manager who can effectively handle escalations, multiple ways of contact (email, phone, chat, etc.), and convenient hours of operation.

  3. Educating users. I'yard an advocate of educating customers on how to use a product. For case, when some of our customers at SkyBell complained that the motion sensor on our video doorbell didn't activate immediately, we responded by explaining why we added a v- to 10-second delay. Once educated, our customers were grateful for the characteristic instead of frustrated.

When you lot focus on boosting customer happiness, it helps forbid the negative experiences that lead to bad reviews. And, co-ordinate to the math, avoiding bad reviews is even more important than getting practiced reviews.

Positive customer reviews are one of the most important factors for your success, and the surest way to become them is by providing an outstanding customer experience. Take the fourth dimension to empathize the customer review ratio, so evaluate your production, customer service, and education efforts. Doing and then will help you lot principal client satisfaction and avoid the bad reviews that are so challenging to overturn.