Businesses thrive by selling a good product or service to their customers, and customer opinions on those products and services are crucial to continued success. One way businesses can ensure they hear from their customers is to facilitate online reviews. Before businesses decide to allow customer reviews on their website, they should consider a few important factors: what types of information should be filtered; how should customers be able to leave reviews and interact with other reviewers; and how should businesses respond to customer reviews and issues.

In this post, I’ll discuss which filters business should consider applying to their online review software.

Filters

Not all reviews are created equal. Some reviews are ‘spam,’ messages created by evil robots bent on telling all of your customers about how great Company X’s new running shoe is (and best of all, cheaper than your running shoes!) Some reviews are full of angry customer rants, sometimes not even related to the product they are supposedly reviewing. So, filters are important. Here are a few things you want to consider filtering from customer reviews.

Profanity- profanity filters are crucial. If customers are going to resort to profanity, they probably aren’t interested in a constructive dialogue. Best to exclude or limit these posts.

Competitor references- remember that, ultimately, this is your website. If customers leave reviews to the tune of “I got this item way cheaper at Company X,” you’re basically providing free advertising for Company X. Better to be aware of your competition and price accordingly, and not include posts that have competitor references.

Liability issues – let’s say that your company sells scissors, and a customer submits a review that says, “I was running with the new Scissors X-Treme model and I fell and cut myself.” You should carefully consider the potential legal issues with such reviews. Better to contact the customer or forward the incident to your customer service/legal department.

Pricing – pricing is in a constant state of flux (just look at gasoline prices), so you may want to consider not posting reviews that heavily reference pricing that’s likely to change. Here’s an example of a review you may want to not post:

“I got the new Scissors X-Treme for $24.99! What a  great deal!”

This post could lead to trouble later if you decide to raise prices or if the price in the review was a temporary sale price. Here’s a review that would be better to post:

“I go the new Scissors X-Treme on sale for $24.99! What a great deal!”

That post is ok, because future readers will clearly see that the $24.99 price was a sale price, saving you potential customer service headaches.

Any review strategy must consider which content, if any, will be excluded from a website. Remember that this site is an extension of your business, so it should be treated with the professionalism and care that you would apply to your other business units.