Manual Replies V/S Automated Smart Replies For Reviews

“What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.”
 

(Tim O’Reilly)
 

With different experiments with technology, today, human beings can hand over most of their repetitive and non-innovative tasks to their self-designed machines. One such biggest invention in the 21st century is ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, generally called AI. Today in this blog, Rannkly is going to share the ingenious role of AI in delivering smart automated replies to the reviews and where the conventional method of giving manual replies is standing in today’s generation.
 

It will be a small deliberation to understand how manual replies and smart automated replies differ and which one must be chosen to leverage the importance of the online presence of the business. But let us first delve down to understand the importance of reviews and how they can be generated to upscale the organization online.
 

WHY ONLINE REVIEWS ARE IMPORTANT?


A simple review is a statement of opinion of a person where he/she expresses the emotions and state of comfortability concerning any person, place, product, etc. But if we jump onto Online reviews.They can be explained as the comments or opinions given by any visitor to the online website or customer who bought some product or service. They are also supplemented with star ratings that vary from 1 to 5 where 1 denoted liked least and 5 denotes liked most.
 

With the onset of digitization of companies, there is a rat race among the companies to rank higher on various browsing platforms like Google. And Google, being such a global organization, has set some rules and regulations for the ranking of different websites. Reviews help the maximum in giving a good online presence to the websites as well as making them authentic for the potential buyers.
 

There are many review management tools in India that strengthens the volume of reviews on various review platforms with advanced AI technologies. Around 68% of the new customers today believe in online reviews before buying any product or service. Hence, the rate of reviews with maximum positive representation is an essential part of every growing business.
 

But if the reviews are so important, then how can we increase their strength on multiple platforms?
 

Today, different AI-driven softwares are able to create the best online review management strategy to generate reviews. What they include is, an email marketing technique in which the customer is sent an email or SMS requesting a review on the platforms like Google, Zomato, Facebook, etc. This is a crucial feature available in the dashboard of Rannkly where the messages are sent to the customers asking for their opinion so that other visitors can get the right information about the place before actually going there.
 

Let us ponder over a few important points that help us to infer why reviews play an important role in the online reputation management:-

• Potential customers can authenticate the website by reading the reviews given on the products and services.
• Helps in increasing the Google ranking of the website.
• It gives the most trustable information to the new visitors rather than advertising or branding.
• Reviews give detailed and practical information about the product that affects the buying decision of the person.
• Helps the business to gain more sales and leads by presenting its positive branding in front of potential customers.

HOW THE REVIEWS MUST BE RESPONDED TO?
 

The reviews are the opinions formed by the user after utilizing the product. This opinion is self-generated and self-motivated because it has no interference from any other to formulate it. Hence, this review must not be taken only as anopinionbut asfeedbackfor the product owner or the service provider. This is like a suggestion from the audience's perspective who may not have built that product but do have a contribution by using it for its purposes and needs. And if that product is successful in fulfilling the needs, as desired by the customers, then it is a perfect hit even if it was not meant to be in that way!

Review platforms are usually considered monologue platforms where only the service receiver puts out their opinions that may or may not be countered by someone else. But in reality, it is a 2-directional platform where both service provider and receiver have to communicate politely and without any biases. If the customer gives a review on the product then it must be responded to by the organization whether the review is positive or negative. So, let us go through some of the points that help to understand how the reviews must be responded to:

• Be polite:-A review is just a statement given by a customer who trusted your brand and bought your service. So, what the opinion is, that may not be in your favor, must be responded to with politeness and diligence.
• Be acceptable:-Humans can never be error-free so if he makes mistakes unconsciously it's nothing new! So, even if you receive a negative review, accept that mistake and assure the customer of no repetition in the future
  
  
• Respond completely:-Respond to every point of the review without neglecting the smaller issues stated by the customer. Every point mentioned by the reviewer is important and must be undertaken with full sincerity. They should be responded with the right substitute or solution to the problem.
• Thankful note:-You should be thankful to your reviewer in the very first phase of the response because most of the customers don’t even bother to give a review. Then you should address the issue and clear the doubt of customers if there is any. Be accountable if there is any delay in the service or malfunctioning in the product.

There are many other points to be undertaken while responding to any review but the 4 points stated above are the most important ones. Every polite and balanced response of the organization not only satisfies the customer but also helps to build a good long-term relationship between the customer and the corporation.

HOW ONE SHOULD RESPOND TO THE REVIEWS- MANUALLY OR THROUGH SMART REPLIES?
 

From the above-stated arguments, we have understood that every review must be responded to dedicatedly. No review should be left unresponded or vague for the customer which makes it difficult for them to understand. But here the main fight is regarding what method could be the most appropriate- whether it is responding manually or using smart replies.

Replying to the customer manually states that every review will be responded to by texting word-by-word reply that includes two main tasks:-

• Reading the review of the review and underlining the points to reply.
• Formulating the perfect response that is to be sent to the customer which is not just a reply but a satisfactory answer.

So, what could be the possible benefits of responding manually to the customers?

PERSONALIZED RESPONSE:-If each of the reviews is read and then responded to, it will be highly personalized and caters to all the points that are to be responded to. They will be a perfect amalgamation of the formal and informal notions in the response that will look more humane and not just computer-formulated.

CREATIVE IN NATURE:-Once each review is responded to manually then every response will be different from one another. This is due to the creativity level of the human mind that cannot write down the same words to every person because every opinion will vary from each other. 
 

But is there any disadvantage of giving manual replies to the reviewers? 
 

TIME ISSUES:-Reading and writing responses for every customer will consume a lot of time. This is a time-taking activity that needs a lot of patience and labor in creating a unique response to each review.

BECOME STRESSFUL:-If an organization has to respond to a few reviews only then there is no major issue but what if it has to respond to thousands of reviews daily? Will it be possible for a human being to write replies word-by-word for such a large amount of reviews daily? No. While doing such a tiring task, it will come to the verge of being stressful to reply to so many people who may or may be genuine users of the product.
 

CAN SMART AND AUTOMATED REPLIES BE A BETTER SUBSTITUTE?
 

Rannkly is one of the best online reputation management platformsthat helps its users to use better and improvised technological solutions to their conventional problems like manual replies to the customers. It has many features that support AI-based technology by which the organizations can respond to the reviews of the customer through smart as well as automated replies. Those features are:-

1. TEMPLATE RESPONSE:-The user is now capable of replying to every review through already formed replies in the form of templates. They just have to click on the most suitable template and click on done. And yes, the response is published!

2. AI SUGGESTIONS:-Rannkly offers its user to take the help from AI suggestions provided at the bottom of the review while responding to the review. These suggestions are created by the software that reads that review through the Natural Language Processing system. Users can select any of those suggestions as a response and publish it.  

3. AUTOMATED RESPONSES:-Users can set a template response for a particular star rating so that whenever a customer gives that rating, an automated response will automatically be sent to the customer. So here, the user doesn't even have to click to reply!

4. REVIEW INSIGHTS:-This is an exclusive feature of Rannkly where the user can go through all the reviews and analyze what people are talking about their product or brand without actually reading any of the reviews. With the help of AI solutions and a Natural Language Processing system, it can drag out the essence of each and overall review and present the conclusion demographically.

NOW THE MAIN QUESTION IS, HOW SMART AND AUTOMATED REPLIES ARE MORE BENEFICIAL THAN ANY OTHER METHOD?

TIME EFFICIENT:-Since the software will read and give the gist of each review, it will save most of the time of the user, reading the reviews before formulating the reply.

QUALITY EFFICIENT:-As the Rannklyreputation management toolwill save the time of reading whole reviews, the user will get more time to respond to the customer with better replies.
 

FORMULATING THE REPLIES:-Now the user doesn't need to create or write the reply. They just have to click on the most suitable response that is already formed by the software with the help of AI. by this, the maximum time of the user will be saved that can be used in other creative tasks.
 

So, what is your opinion about the review management? Can reviews be handled with manual replies or by smart automated responses? Comment down your opinions and let us be enlightened with your wave of thoughts. If you want to learn to generate reviews for your organization, do visit this blog:-https://blog.rannkly.com/generate-more-reviews-for-better-online-reputation-management