The rise and growing importance of customer review apps

MAKATI CITY, Philippines - April 22, 2016 - PRLog -- Consumer reviews of businesses, products and services are having a growing influence over what other consumers choose to do than ever before. The importance of what your family, friends and even complete strangers say about different restaurants, stores, hotels, resorts etc., can be seen in the number of apps and online sites that now actively encourage reviews by customers.

Apps such as Zomato, Tripadvisor, Agoda, Yelp, Foursquare, Around Us, and thousands more have been built around the idea that sharing our opinions with people is a vital part of the social engagement that heavily influences which stores we decide to shop at, which hotels we decide to stay at, even which restaurants we decide to eat at. Customer review apps are certainly more popular and important now than ever before.

A recent study found that 85% of consumers say they read online reviews for local businesses, up from 76% in 2012. Interestingly the number of reviews consumers read before trusting the business has gone down. Before forming an opinion of a business, 67% of consumers read six or fewer reviews, up from 52% in 2012. This means those reviews are more powerful now than they use to be.

There is an increasing need to engage with people in the social media world whether you want to or not, and this evolution of online surveys and business ratings that are found everywhere by anyone has prompted the development of a new line of online services for small businesses.

It's no longer enough to do your best in your business with your customers, and It's no longer enough to ask your customers for a referral. Today, businesses need to be much more proactive when it comes to positioning themselves best for those soft marketing opportunities.

The first phase was to monitor your online brand. What were people saying about your business on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? The next phase was to take it a bit further and be open about any negative comments, do whatever you could to resolve the issue and let people know; be transparent in the process as much as possible.

Now we're in phase three, with companies developing products designed specifically to promote and generate a positive reputation.

Kumusta app:

Kumusta app is a software tool that improves your relationship with your customers and future potential customers, ignites great word of mouth, and helps your business market itself. The tool prompts your customers to provide you with reviews, ratings and opinions regardinghow they rate the service of your business, how they rate the business itself, as well as your employees. The app will help bring attention to any not-so-great reviews of your company's service or employees, which gives you an opportunity to respond and resolve their issues, and look in to the matter. This attention promotes strong customer loyalty and more positive reviews.

You can then publish the good reviews to your website and ask those customers to leave the comments on more public review sites. Negative experiences are more likely to find their way online than positive ones; it's just human nature. Proactively encouraging happy customers to say something online can help raise those numbers.

The software comes with template to customers requesting feedback, which links them to a simple customer user interface.

Customers are more likely to say something to an individual person regarding their service or company, often complimenting them, but are much less likely to post the same comments online. On the flip side, because no one likes confrontation, any negative comments may more easily find their way online rather than in a person with a company representative or employee.

For more information, feel free to visit http://kumustaapp.biz/ (http://MYX1.trk.elasticemail.com/tracking/click?msgid=qbc...)