Online or off, when someone talks in a positive manner about your business it’s a wonderful thing. But what about those negative reviews? What do you do about those? Should you respond to them? Ignore them? Start pouring shots?
"30% of shoppers under the age of 44 look at reviews for every purchase" - Power Reviews
It is really a good ideal to get into the habit of responding to all reviews good and bad. Think about it from your customer’s side for a second. They have taken the time to let you (and others) know about how they feel about your company and the experience they had in dealing with your company.
The positive ones are easy and fun to respond to so lets get back to those nasty negative ones shall we…
"You don’t really get to see how good a company is (or isn’t) until the shit hits the fan!"
Respond To Them Quickly Your customer is upset and has let you know. Get to it and deal with it right away. The longer you leave it the more upset the customer can become. Others may notice that delayed response and it could affect their purchasing decisions. Better to deal with it right away and limit the damage.
Really Listen And Respond Accordingly Ok so maybe you can’t really listen to a written review, but you can take the time to put yourself in your customers shoes and really understand what they are trying to tell you. This is a learning experience for you and your team so respond accordingly. Your customer will know you have taken some time to really understand what their problem is, and how you are going to deal with it.
Give An Honest Response Don’t lie yourself into a potentially bigger hole. If there was a mistake, own it! In the long run your customer will appreciate the honesty.
Be Kind Yes, it can be hard with some negative reviews, but thank them for taking the time to let you know about their problems with your company. It will be very hard for them to remain mad at your company if you are constantly nice to them.
Avoid Copy & Paste Responses Always give each review a custom response. Yes, it takes a little longer but your customer will know when you have taken the time to reply personally to them.
Take It Offline This is a good practice to get into with negative reviews. You don’t need everyone seeing any potential compensation you may offer your customer for their problems. This can encourage some people to give negative reviews just to get something for free.
Ask them for their email and take it there.
Go Above And Beyond
You will know when your customer has a legitimate complaint. Like we stated earlier, own it! Then show your customer you own it, and let them experience how far you will go to make things right.
Follow Up After you have addressed, fixed and maybe compensated your customer, follow up with them. Confirm they are happy with they way you dealt with the problem and don’t be afraid to ask them to remove or update their negative review.
Spot The Fake Reviews Yes they happen. Learn how to spot and deal with them. We will feature a more detailed article on these later but for now, know that fake reviews are against most terms of service agreements and can be removed when reported to the proper leadership of each platform.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Look, no matter what, you are probably going to get some negative reviews at some point. Approach them with an open mind – your customer is telling you something about your company. Learn from it, adjust business practices from it, grow from it. If you approach that negative review with a positive attitude, it will get sorted and all will be good.