How Can Proxies Help Monitor Reviews?

Last updated on December 5th, 2023 at 07:54 pm

The success of your business rests on three crucial pillars – the quality of your products and services, the dedication of your employees, and, most importantly, the opinion of your customers. Even with the most highly trained staff and the best products and services available, if some of your customers start reviewing your business poorly, it will have a domino effect and ruin your reputation.

The voice of your customers is powerful, and you need to learn to harness it and use it to your advantage.

That’s where review monitoring comes in exceptionally handy.

Learn more about review monitoring, the critical roles it plays in managing your reputation, and how you can overcome the challenges that come with it by using tools like residential proxies.

Gauging audience sentiment with review monitoring

Having your customers leave public reviews is one of the best ways to establish a strong reputation that inspires trust and loyalty. That’s why it’s so critical to have honest reviews and testimonials prominently displayed on your website, social media accounts, and more.

Reviews serve as social proof that encourages members of your target audience to give your business a try and choose you over the competitors. Of course, that only works if the reviews you receive are largely positive.

A few negative reviews here and there shouldn’t pose a problem, as they’ll only serve to give your brand some more credibility. Problems arise when you ignore negative reviews, and they start accumulating. Moreover, your reputation might plummet if you fail to address these reviews politely, professionally, and timely.

When dissatisfied customers leave comments directly on your website, it’s easy enough to handle them. However, not everyone will be willing to speak directly to you when they’re complaining. Instead, they’ll take to their own social media, forums, review sites, online groups, and more.

That’s why you need to start review monitoring.

It’s the process of tracking all brand mentions across the internet, finding out what your customers are saying about you behind your back – on sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Reddit, and more. It allows you to truly learn what your customers like and dislike about your brand. More importantly, it lets you identify your weak points and improve processes.

The critical roles of review monitoring

Review monitoring is essential for businesses large and small. It serves several critical purposes and can help you ensure success.

Reputation management

Over 60% of consumers say negative reviews would make them not want to interact with a business.

If your business has been stagnant for a while despite your best efforts to attract attention, it could be because of negative reviews left on third-party sites.

Review monitoring allows you to find where these negative reviews have been left and develop a comprehensive reputation management strategy that can change the public perception of your brand.

Feedback collection

While it’s always nice to get praise, if you want honest feedback on improving processes and ensuring better customer satisfaction, you need to look at your negative reviews.

With review monitoring, you can identify the most common complaints and develop strategies to eliminate the issues your customers are most likely to encounter.

Customer loyalty

Your customers aren’t solely impacted by their interactions with your brand. Whether or not they will remain loyal to you will also depend on how you treat others.

If you ignore others’ complaints, problems, and negative comments, even your most satisfied customers will turn their backs on you. After all, it shows that it’s only a matter of time before you start dismissing them.

To ensure the utmost customer loyalty, you’ll need to show everyone that you care not only about your happiest customers but also your most dissatisfied ones. You’ll need to respond to criticism and complaints as best you can.

The only way to do so is if you engage in review monitoring and address complaints wherever you find them.

The challenges of review monitoring

At first glance, review monitoring seems simple enough. All you have to do is Google your brand name and go through the sites and platforms that mention it.

In practice, it’s much more complicated, even if you use bots to scan your brand mentions. Not only because of the sheer volume of platforms you might have to go through but because of the potential restrictions you might encounter.

Many websites will geo-block their content, for instance, preventing you from accessing them because of the physical location your IP address is connected with. Many more will prevent bot access, meaning you’d have to manually visit them to collect the information you need.

You can overcome these obstacles, and more, with the help of residential proxies.

Residential proxies act as a bridge between you and the rest of the world wide web. They hide your IP address, making you virtually anonymous, and assign you a brand new one connected to any physical location you may want.

Since residential proxies provide you with a genuine IP address, any traffic coming from them seems trustworthy. You’ll be able to hide bot activity, avoid IP blocks, and go around geo-restrictions easily.

Conclusion

Review monitoring is an essential, ongoing process that requires your undivided attention. It can help you improve your reputation management, collect essential feedback, and inspire customer loyalty.

With the help of residential proxies, you can automate your review monitoring with bots, avoid common challenges and restrictions, and collect real-time, relevant information whenever needed.