Respond to Google Review as Business or Individual?

[brooksmanley]

Hello Moz World!

My agency has never had a great strategy for reputation management, but have begun acquiring some Google reviews. We know it's best practice to respond – but I've never considered whether I should respond as an individual or with our company's GMB? The owner of our GMB is "Engenius" – a general admin account for our agency. I'm also a user on the account, as the "owner," but I'm technically not the owner of our company.

Should the owner be added as a user and respond directly? Or is it okay to respond as "Engenius" (the brand)? Or can I respond as the "owner," though I'm not technically?

I know ultimately it's probably not a huge deal, but any thoughts would be awesome! Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

This is a good question, Brooks!

My take: When scaling rep management for companies with 100s or 1,000s of locations, there's no way the owner is going to be personally responding to each review. Rather, he/she will be designating staff to act in his/her name. So, basically, you can think of this scenario this way. You're being empowered by the owner to act on his/her behalf, and putting the name "owner" on the review is an indication that the reply represents company policy, rather than the owner sitting at a laptop late into the night writing responses. I can't imagine John Mackey was logging hours replying to Whole Foods reviews.

So, this is one of those scenarios in which I say, "Think big." If the "big guys" have staff who respond in their names, then smaller businesses can follow suit. I think we're pretty safe in assuming that Google's generic language of "response from the owner" isn't convincing Whole Foods shoppers that they've just receive a personal reply from John Mackey

That being said, it would certainly behoove owners and C-suites to craft very clear policy governing how employees should respond to the public while representing the brand. This is a step that should not be overlooked in organizations large or small.

I hope others will weigh in on this, as this is just my opinion.

[nhhernandez]

I think it's best to respond as a company rather than as an individual. Company responses seem more legitimate and help to build trust especially when responding to a negative review. Personally, when I see these responses, I don't really think it's the actual owner but are representatives of the company.

[brooksmanley]

Thanks for this, Miriam! I love that take on thinking big.

[MiriamEllis]

You're welcome, Brooks!