Store Reputation: How to Keep Promises and Handle Reviews

For customers to trust your store, your team must keep specific promises: sell at the agreed price, confirm that items are in stock, meet dispatch terms, and respond to inquiries. The owner should assign someone to each process, write down the rules for staff, and regularly check where mistakes occur.

For online sales, tell customers the terms of purchase before concluding the contract and confirm them in writing or by electronic message. Collect genuine reviews without offering rewards or selecting only satisfied customers. Set internal response deadlines for complaints, and assess results by completed orders, resolved inquiries, and customer feedback.

Check exactly what the store promises customers

The owner or manager can start with a test order. Test the purchase process: find an item, check its price, ask whether it is in stock, choose delivery, and read the confirmation. Record any discrepancies and assign a staff member to fix each one.

If the store charges different prices online and in the shop, explain where each offer applies. Before a promotion begins, check its terms on the website, in advertising, and in the salesperson’s instructions. When it ends, remove outdated ads and check the price tags.

Illustrative example. An item costs UAH 1,200, the discount is 10%, and delivery costs UAH 80. The discount is 1,200 × 10% = UAH 120, the discounted item price is UAH 1,080, and the customer’s total cost is UAH 1,160. If the customer pays the carrier for delivery separately, state this next to the order total.

Confirm availability and the actual dispatch timeframe

Before confirming an order, the manager checks available stock, reservations, and whether the item can be picked and packed. For the last unit or an item with a discrepancy in the records, ask a warehouse employee to check it physically. Record who confirmed availability and when.

Distinguish dispatch from delivery. For example, the message “we will hand it to the carrier tomorrow by 6:00 p.m.” describes the store’s action. The expected delivery date also depends on the carrier and route. State both timeframes in the order confirmation and explain which one is an estimate.

If you use Google Merchant Center and accept pre-orders or orders awaiting restocking, show the expected dispatch date on the product page. This is required by Google’s product page requirements.

As soon as the manager learns of a delay, they tell the customer the reason, the new expected timeframe, and the available next steps. First agree with the customer before changing the model, color, or other agreed terms. Keep the customer’s reply in the correspondence.

Sync online store inventory with Torgsoft

If the store keeps its primary records in Torgsoft, the additional paid “Online Store Synchronization” option lets it send product and stock information to the website. The website developer’s help is needed to set up the exchange on the website side. In the settings, select the record-keeping centers whose stock should be sent to the online store.

On the “Record-Keeping Centers” tab, you can enable “Sync only products in stock.” Products with zero or negative quantities will then be removed from the online store during synchronization. This filter does not work for the electronic catalog. Before enabling it, agree on its use with the person responsible for the website, especially if you accept pre-orders.

According to the synchronization setup instructions, schedule automatic data exchange no more often than once every 10 minutes, taking other synchronization objects into account, as clarified in the Torgsoft Help Center; Torgsoft must be running on a specified computer under the specified user. The manager should check the exchange log and the result on the website. Stock may change between exchanges, so the manager checks it before confirming an order.

Make online purchase terms available before customers order

The requirements below are governed by Ukrainian Law No. 1023-XII, “On Consumer Rights Protection.” The main provisions of the new Law No. 3153-IX take effect no earlier than the termination or cancellation of martial law. The list below concerns distance sales of non-food goods to individuals for personal needs that are not directly connected with business activity or the performance of an employee’s duties. For food products, the owner must separately check the applicable requirements. Under Article 13, Part 2, before concluding such a contract, the seller must provide:

• the seller’s name and location, and how to submit claims;
• the product’s main characteristics;
• the price, including delivery, and payment terms;
• warranty obligations and related servicing or repair services;
• other delivery terms, the period during which the customer may accept the offer, and how to terminate the contract;
• the minimum duration of a contract for recurring deliveries and the cost of electronic communications services, if it differs from the maximum tariff.

The seller confirms in writing or by electronic message that this information has been provided. The seller may not unilaterally change the confirmed terms. These requirements are set out in Article 13, Parts 2–3.

In practice, the owner can approve the payment, delivery, and contact pages; the manager can check their links during checkout; and the customer can receive a message with the agreed terms. Keep the confirmation text with the order so staff can retrieve the agreement.

Describe the return and warranty claim process separately, taking the product range and sales method into account. Give customers a specific contact, explain what information will help locate the purchase, where to send the product, and who will tell them what happens next.

Assign a complaint manager and set response deadlines

Send complaints about a broken agreement or a product defect to one designated manager. They gather the facts, involve the salesperson, warehouse, or owner, and make sure the customer receives updates at the agreed time. Assign a replacement for their day off.

You can introduce an internal SLA (service level agreement)—rules the team uses to measure response and resolution times. The Zendesk Help Center explains the use of an SLA in this way. The plan below is an example for a store. These suggested timeframes are internal targets; separately account for the deadlines for meeting customer requests under the law and contract.

Define the hours during which the team counts time as business hours. Illustrative example: the store handles inquiries Monday to Friday, from 09:00 to 18:00, without a break. If a message arrives on Friday at 17:30, two business hours will pass on Monday at 10:30. Show customers the inquiry hours.

Keep one complaint log. For each inquiry, record its number, receipt time, channel, issue, person responsible, next response deadline, agreed solution, and outcome. Add links to the order, correspondence, and relevant documents. Give access to the employees who handle inquiries.

If a customer reports a product defect, ask them to describe it and, if needed, send a photo. Record what they are requesting. The manager should pass the inquiry to an employee who can arrange the next steps and tell the customer what the process will be. A first reply does not, by itself, mean the issue has been resolved.

Respond to reviews specifically and without personal information

For a negative review, first identify the verifiable facts: the order was not dispatched on time, the price changed, there was no reply, or a different product was sent. Check them against the store’s records. In your reply, name the issue and offer a next step. Google recommends avoiding personal attacks and not disclosing the reviewer’s private information.

Illustrative first reply: “We’ll check why the order wasn’t dispatched on the agreed date. Please email the order number to the store’s email address listed in our profile. The manager will check the records and share the result within one business day.”

Once the mistake is confirmed, say exactly what the store will do and when. For example: “We confirmed your order before checking stock. We apologize for the mistake. The manager has contacted you to agree on the next steps.” Use this reply only if the actions described have actually taken place.

Do not publish the customer’s phone number, delivery address, documents, or screenshots of private correspondence. If you cannot find the order from the review, ask for details through a private channel. Not finding a match in the database does not, by itself, explain what happened.

Invite genuine reviews without offering rewards

According to Google’s definition, a genuine review reflects a personal experience with a place or business. Invite customers to describe their own experience without suggesting a rating or providing ready-made text.

Use the same process to invite customers to leave reviews: do not offer a discount, gift, or bonus for leaving, changing, or deleting a review, and do not send a link only to customers who have already praised the store.

Choose the same point after a completed purchase to invite all customers. You could write: “If you wish, share your experience shopping at our store on Google. Your review will help us understand what we can improve.” Do not pressure customers to leave a review on the spot or link complaint resolution to changing a review. Do not set salespeople a target for the number of reviews or mentions of their names.

This process does not guarantee a particular rating or search position. It helps the store collect reviews without trying to influence customers’ ratings.

Review service quality every week

Once a week, the manager can prepare a short report for the owner: the number of orders dispatched within the agreed timeframe, the number of complaints received, recurring reasons, and cases where the team missed its internal response deadline. Compare periods using the same rules and state the number of orders or responses.

All figures in the table are made up for illustration. The CSAT formula using ratings of 4 and 5 is described by Qualtrics. To use it, ask one clear question, such as: “How satisfied are you with the service you received during this purchase?” Explain the scale: 1 means not at all satisfied, and 5 means completely satisfied.

If 50 out of 200 customers respond, the response rate is 50 ÷ 200 × 100% = 25%. The 80% CSAT in this illustrative example applies to those 50 responses. The opinions of the remaining customers are unknown. Run internal surveys separately from invitations to leave a Google review, and do not use them to select satisfied customers.

After reviewing the report, choose one recurring problem and assign an action, an owner, and a deadline. For example, if orders are canceled because items are out of stock, the manager checks inventory exchanges and the process for confirming the last units. The following week, they compare the number of such cancellations and check whether the team is following the new process.

A first-week plan for the store owner

1. Place a test order and record any discrepancies in prices, stock, and timeframes.
2. Assign people responsible for prices, order confirmations, dispatch, and complaints.
3. Check the purchase terms pages and the message customers receive.
4. Approve internal response deadlines, business hours, and a replacement for the person responsible.
5. Set up an inquiry log and prepare a neutral review invitation.
6. At the end of the week, review recurring problems and assign a specific fix.

Sources

• Law of Ukraine “On Consumer Rights Protection” No. 1023-XII — Article 13, Parts 2–3: information provided before concluding a distance contract and confirmation of that information.
• Law of Ukraine “On Consumer Rights Protection” No. 3153-IX — Section IX, paragraph 1: conditions for the new law to take effect.
• State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection: Consumer rights when buying goods online — explanation of the requirements in Article 13 of Law No. 1023-XII.
• Google Merchant Center: Product page requirements — dispatch date for pre-orders.
• Google Maps: Prohibited and restricted content — rules for publishing reviews on Google Maps and preventing rating manipulation.
• Google Maps: Genuine experience — basis for a review.
• Google Business Profile: Tips for reviews — responding to reviews and protecting private information.
• Zendesk: Reply times and SLA — internal service-time rules.
• Qualtrics: Calculating CSAT — share of ratings of 4 and 5.
• Torgsoft: Setting up online store synchronization — record-keeping centers, the in-stock filter, and automatic exchange conditions; the Torgsoft Help Center, “Online Store Synchronization” section — the paid option and the exception for the electronic catalog.