What is review management?
Review management is the routine of collecting reviews, reading them, and replying to them across every site where a business is listed. It covers the request that produces a review, the alert when one lands, the reply that answers it, and the reporting that shows whether rating and volume are moving.
The reason this is a routine rather than a project is that reviews decay. A five-star average built two years ago tells a customer very little today, and most platforms weight recent reviews more heavily. A business that stops asking does not hold steady; it slides.
Replying matters more than most owners expect, and not mainly for the person who wrote the review. The reply is read by the next customer, who is deciding whether this is a business that pays attention. A defensive reply to a two-star review does more damage than the two stars did.
Common questions
How quickly should a business reply to a review?
Within a day or two for anything negative, and ideally the same week for the rest. The point is not speed for its own sake. It is that a reply written while the visit is still recent can be specific, and a specific reply reads as genuine where a generic one does not.
Should you reply to positive reviews too?
Yes, briefly. A short, non-templated thank you is enough. A page where every five-star review has the identical reply is visibly automated and undoes the point of replying at all.