How to Handle and Optimize Google Reviews for Multiple Business Locations?

In this highly competitive digital era, it is essential for brands to establish a strong presence all across the internet. Apart from having a well defined, immersive website, possessing a dignified Google Business Profile (GBP) is also necessary.

There are various things that a brand needs to consider when optimizing its GBP. From photos and posts to updating each and every detail is a must. In addition, reviews are one of the most crucial aspects that require a lot of attention.

In order to maintain a strong reputation for the brand and establish trust in the eyes of potential and existing customers, it is crucial for a brand to manage Google reviews in an optimal and efficient manner. However, this isn’t as easy as it seems. Instead, things start getting even more complicated when a business is operating in more than one location.

Irrespective of whether you are operating through a franchise model or running a large-scale business, handling Google reviews for multiple locations is a challenging task. Apart from being a time consuming task, it is also necessary for a brand to pay complete attention to minor details along with responding in a proactive manner. And wait, how can we oversee the challenge of fake reviews and spam messages? After adding in these points, the review management procedure for multiple locations starts getting even more complex.

Worried? Well, you should be! Just kidding! Take a deep breath and relax, as we have got you covered!

Through the medium of this blog, you will learn about different Google review strategies for multiple locations that will help your business simplify the entire review management procedure. But first, let us discuss some of the main challenges experienced when handling Google reviews for multiple locations.

a.) Volume of reviews

A business that is based in multiple locations is probably a large scale business. Hence, the challenges faced will also be large. As the number of locations increases, the number of reviews also increases automatically. And very clearly, if the brand does not have a coherent system to handle those reviews, it will not take much time for the online brand position to fall.

Understand this with an example: Let us suppose that you run a multi location waffle chain that has nearly 180 outlets which are present in 18 cities. Since the performance of every outlet is different, there are various positive and negative reviews on your Google Business Profile. In this situation of a high volume of reviews, any negative review that goes unnoticed will result in a missed opportunity for improvement.

b.) Inconsistent responses

A non standardise process will undoubtedly result in inconsistent responses. It is easier for a single location business to handle negative reviews. However, a multi location business might experience a severe damage to its brand image if it misses out on responding to a negative feedback on its GBP.

c.) Tracking and monitoring

Tracking real time reviews and proactively responding to each one of them is a not so challenging task in the case of single outlet or single location business. However, things take a significant turn in the case of a multi location businesses. It gets tough for a brand to track real time reviews and monitor them continuously.

Since we have learnt about the major challenges faced by multi location businesses in handling Google reviews, let us now discover a few strategies that will help them manage and optimize the same.

Strategies to manage Google reviews for multiple business locations! 

1.) Centralize your review management

As already discussed, handling feedback from numerous outlets is one of the major challenges faced by multi location businesses. To solve this problem, the only solution available with multi outlet brands is to centralize their review management procedure. Any reputed and professional online reputation management agency can provide businesses with effective and efficient review management tools that further possess a centralized dashboard that allows the brand to monitor their reviews from all the locations in one place.

Centralization of review management does not only simplify the entire procedure but also ensures that no feedback is missed and responses are made proactively. In addition, this centralized process also ensures that the brand maintains a consistent approach to review management, irrespective of the location of the business.

2.) Create location-specific response templates

In the case of a multi-location brand that is dealing with Google reviews for more than one location, personalizing every individual response along with maintaining a unified brand tone is a necessary thing. To accomplish this, brands can consider creating different response templates that are further tailored according to every specific location. However, they need to keep in mind that the created template should be flexible enough so that it can further be customized on the basis of every individual feedback.

For example, suppose that someone is leaving a positive review at your waffle store in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi. In this case, an ideal reply will look something like, ‘We are glad that you had a wonderful experience at our Lajpat Nagar store. We hope to see you very soon again.

Doing these things doesn’t just help a brand keep things personal but also ensures that it is perfectly maintaining the tone of its business when responding to Google reviews for different locations.

3.) Train local teams for quick responses

Even after centralizing the entire review management procedure, brands and businesses need to ensure that they have a dedicated team member for every individual location who reviews and responds to Google reviews for different places. 

However, this can only be accomplished by proper training as it will ensure that the dedicated team member understands the value of time responses and also gets an understanding of handling positive as well as negative feedback in an effective manner. 

Brands who don’t wish to hire a specific person for this task can also opt for professional online reputation management services to accomplish the same. 

Doing this will guarantee that the Google reviews left by the customers are addressed in a proactive manner, further depicting the standards of your brand along with building trust and credibility in the eyes of the customers. 

These were some strategies that will help brands manage Google reviews for multiple business locations. Let us now end this blog by discovering some points to optimize the same. 

How do we optimize Google reviews for multiple business locations? 

• Make sure that your Google Business Profile is regularly updated. Avoid negative customer feedback and provide accurate information to eliminate conflicts.
• Take into consideration valuable data and insights in order to find out what’s suitable for different locations and what’s not. Identify specific strengths and weaknesses and further emphasize on making improvements.
• Do not ignore negative reviews at any cost. Respond to them as soon as possible. Also, avoid using any language that might pinch the customer. Instead, take it as a sport, agree with the customer, and ensure them that they will not face the same issue when they visit again.
• Don’t try to handle things all by yourself. Consider setting up a dedicated team. Otherwise, you can opt for professional and reputed online reputation management services in order to get the best results.