Replying to apps and games reviews is a valuable channel of communicating with your users. Answering their questions and requests can help you to reach the higher ratings and conversion rate, improve the product, get loyal users and, in general, achieve more sales. Before buying it, users will always get to read the reviews first, so other customers’ experience will be fundamental in their decision-making regarding your app. That’s why the replies must be fast and detailed.
Today we’re going to get into a strategy for responding to reviews. If you’ve never worked with the reviews, you’ll be able to start doing it properly and see the first positive results. If you’ve already done that and didn’t see much effect, our tips and tricks will make your responding work more automated. You will also learn more about the common mistakes that make it less effective.
Strategy 1: Reply to all reviews
When to use it
You can use this method when you have a small number of reviews (10–20), and the support team can handle replying to all of them.
Take into consideration all reviews received. It’s especially important for a new app, as the reviews help to get feedback right from the start, or after a new feature launch. In a way, it can be referred to as a customer development methodology: which users are new, how fast they learned to work with a product, what they liked or didn’t like, etc.
After the app launch, replying fast is not as crucial as replying correctly. The focus must be on users’ opinions and helping them to learn how to use an app. If they’re not able to figure out how to use it and you don’t assist them properly, they will definitely go to your competitors. New users will only see problems and negative reviews when visiting your app page, which will drop the conversion rate.
How to start
Start following reviews on Slack, Discord, or email. Choose the services that will enable you to send replies easily — the faster you get notified about the problem, the faster your team will be able to handle it. You can also write to your users that you have been currently working on fixing the issues.
Android developers are able to get feedback from alpha and beta testers even before publishing their apps. Access to reviews is available through Slack and the personal profile, which makes it possible to start replying right away. Beta reviews are considered as working with users, the only difference being that they are not published on Google Play and don’t affect ratings and rankings.
>More about working with the users after the app launch using the example of the Babycare & Breastfeeding app here.
Strategy 2: Only reply to reviews that got featured
When to use it
Use this method when there are few app reviews (more than 50 reviews per week), and when negative ones are less than 10% (1–2*)
The reviews that got featured show up on the app page on the App Store and Google Play. The App Store publishes six reviews, while Google Play shows three reviews on smartphones and four reviews on the Web store. Every country has its own language and specific reviews, so it’s important to divide the countries and locations and work with them separately.
These reviews are the most important for install-to-conversion rates, as most users only get an impression of the app based on the first reviews they see. If most of them are complaints, it can only have a negative effect on the number of installs.
How to start
You can use filters on AppFollow to reply to such reviews faster. Keep track of what reviews are getting popular in different countries and how many likes they get — all of that is visible on the AppFollow profile.
Want to receive your featured reviews on Zendesk, Helpshift, or another Help Desk service? Get in touch and we’ll set them up for you.
Make sure you inform users that you’ve taken care of their problem. To make it work faster, use tags to find the specific tickets; e.g. “update reply” or “problem with sign-in registration”. You can also ask users to change your rating when they update their feedback. In this way, you’ll increase your rankings.
More about working with the featured reviews using the Hotellook app example here.
Strategy 3: Only reply to negative reviews
When to use it
Use this method if an app has many negative reviews (1–3*), more than 10–15%
By replying only to negative reviews, we solve the users’ problems and make it less stressful for the support team. The more unhappy customers we can help with the answers and turn into happy ones, the higher our ratings and install conversion will be.
How to start
- Receive negative reviews with the service used by the support team, e,g, Slack, Zendesk, Help Scout, Intercom, Helpshift, and the personal profile on AppFollow. Replying to the issue is possible directly from the ticket.
- Get positive and negative reviews separately. For example, negative ones go straight to Help Desk or a dedicated chat on Slack for immediate reaction. The rest of the messages should be sent to the service most convenient for analysis, such as Slack, Discord, or email.
- Tag the negative reviews and use the semantic analysis to define what the users complain about most often. Make tags with the most common issues, such as “registration bug” or “update bug”. It will help if you can find a similar template and reply in time.
- Use response templates. This will take less time to reply to negative reviews asking users for more details or reassuring them that update bugs will be fixed. Prepare two or three templates for each tag with issuers, and reply within a couple of seconds.
- Monitor the updated reviews. AppFollow offers a “Became better/Became worse” filter. It shows whether the users change their reviews for the better (which means that the response strategy and support team are working well), or worse (check how fast and efficiently support managers are working). In this case, you may need to change the template response, or not use it completely.
> Read more about working with the negative reviews using the example of the Telegram app here.
Strategy 4: Automatically respond to reviews
When to use
This strategy is suitable if you have a support department and a team of support agents.
The strategy is convenient when users ask questions about your services: online store, discounts, subscription purchase, or a new quest, etc.
When users give 1–2 *, they want to catch the developer’s attention to deal with their issues.
The number of reviews may be overwhelming, so one negative review won’t make the conversion number drop; but the users won’t be able to make a purchase, and therefore there will be less profit for the company.
How to start
Work with customers through the Help Desk services or straight through AppFollow:
- Help Desk is more convenient for support agents to work with as they feel more comfortable with it. Each ticket can show the update history, leave a comment for colleagues, or ask for help with the answer.
- If you don’t use Help Desk services, set up auto tags and response templates on AppFollow. Both of them can be divided according to users’ requests and their languages if you work with several countries.
Templates won’t make 100% of working with reviews automated, as there will be more difficult issues requiring attention and help.
In addition, you can use the “Became worse” filter on AppFollow. Find the reviews that got lower ratings. As users can update them consistently, the conversion rate of each version may go down. Start replying to every update until the problems are solved.
Read more about working with the Help Desk service using the example of Zendesk in our article.
Common Mistakes
- No notifications. Learn about the problem and reply quickly to get a higher rating from the users. Without getting notifications, you may take a week or more to reply, and lose the chance to win new customers.
- Relying on previous replies. Users don’t remember what you wrote previously and won’t start searching for the answer in other reviews. When asking the questions, they want to be replied to specifically. Every time a user updates a review, go ahead and update your reply.
- Fixing bugs without informing. Show your customers that you are working on the problems they have faced. Fix the bugs in a new release, and update a reply to those asking (use tags to find these particular messages). Also, try to ask the users to give high ratings, and the conversion rate will go up. Publish what you’ve changed in the What’s New section. (Yes, users read those, and update their reviews accordingly.)
- Using one template for two different updates. It looks like you can’t really be bothered to reply. Add emojis when you send Thank You replies.
- Ignoring featured reviews. If some of the featured reviews are negative ones, this will lead to a lower conversion rate.
- Being okay with the negative ones. Spam or PR from your competitors are crucial for conversion: users can just choose the other app. If the negative reviews are coming from bad competitors, complain to them or give dislikes. Learn how to do this in our Help Centre.
How to Choose the Right Strategy
It’s important to remember the following when working with reviews:
- In the early stages, reviews help you to understand users and attract them to your app.
- When developing and growing, reviews influence conversion to-install-rates.
- Even after winning the market, reviews are important for loyal users and sales.
If there are not enough people in a team to work with the reviews, combine the above strategies and reply only to featured and negative reviews. This will cover the most problematic areas in working with the users.
These strategies are not only suitable for iOS and Android apps. AppFollow makes it possible to also work with Mac and Microsoft apps and games, and all the above-mentioned strategies can be applied to them.
Do you want to improve working with your customers’ reviews? Get in touch with us and we will help you to set up working with reviews, improve your ratings, increase conversion-to-installs, and more.