It sounds obvious, but it's often overlooked. The internet is overflowing with review sites, and although most of them are about either hotels or online shops, I'm noticing more and more 'bricks and mortar' businesses are getting reviews. The wide spread adoption of Google places will certainly be contributing to this, and with its prominence in google searches, online reviews by your customers are only going to become more widespread.

This can work for and against you. Clearly you need to be aware of the possibility, in order to respond where appropriate to any negative reviews. One of the best ways to do this is to setup Google alerts. This allows you to be emailed, either immediately, or daily when your search phrase (for example, your company name) appears in a new google search.

Clearly having an existing social media infrastructure in place gives consumers a better chance to communicate any dissatisfaction to you before they launch into a negative review on any of the reviews website - and equally it gives you a great chance to respond and show all your followers (customers) that you have resolved the issue.

However reviews can also be useful to gather customers opinions, enough to possibly influence future strategy. I was reading some excellent reviews of our customer Semi-Chem on this reviews website, when I noticed this comment by a user called Judith; "I'm always a little mad at myself for not shopping in Semi-Chem more. I mean, they are, nine times out of ten, cheaper than Boots, and yet I always end up being won over by the promise of points!". Clearly Semi-Chem have got the pricing right - from the rest of the reviews everyone agrees Semi-Chem is the place to go on price. However this user in particular is prepared to knowingly spend more money in Boots just because she receives points with every purchase.

I know from one of our customers, Jempsons, who use our system to run their points scheme, that points are considered extremely valuable to customers. In Judiths case, the cash value of the points are unlikely to be as much as as the money she could have saved by going to Semi-Chem, but the 'perceived' value was greater, which is why she went to Boots.

Its valuable information for retailers, and its free. Judith may be an isolated case, but its certainly worth investigating whether there is a whole market of Judiths out there who could be persuaded to shop with you instead of your competition, if you can change the perceived value of your offering.