Everyone loves receiving positive reviews commending about their outstanding service or product. However, life is not a bed of roses and the world of business can be full of thorns. So, what do you do when your business gets a negative review? In this era of transparency and consumer empowerment, it can happen to even the best businesses.
There are proven ways to minimise the negative consequences, and you could even use bad reviews to help your business grow.
Here’re six ways you can deal with it.
1) Don’t Panic!
The moment you first become aware of a negative review is not the best time to respond. Yes, you should respond and address their feedback quickly, but you need to make sure you’re in the right mindset. For business owners, it’s very easy to take any criticism personally as it can feel like a personal attack. Keep the review in perspective and don’t take it to heart. Remember that it’s only one experience and everyone understands that things can go wrong
2) Respond Publicly
Even if you know the customer, responding publicly is a great idea as it gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your business’ values and showcases your concern for customers. Remember that potential customers will be reading your response and forming opinions based on what you do when things go wrong.
3) Be Gracious and Keep Your Cool
This can be tricky so take a deep breath and think carefully about what you’re going to say. Even if the reviewer seems to be making unfounded claims, don’t lash out, get personal or argue against their review. Instead, thank the reviewer for their feedback, acknowledge their dissatisfaction and invite them back, preferably encouraging them to contact you personally.
4) Offer to Make Amends
Contact the customer directly with some sort of offer to resolve their issue or compensate them for having a bad experience. This could be in the form of a refund, a free service / product, or some type of special treatment on their next visit. Unless the review has been submitted anonymously, you can send the reviewer a private message through the website.
With proper handling, often an unhappy customer can turn out to become one of your most loyal fans.
5) Take Feedback Onboard
No, the customer isn’t always right, but if you get a similar complaint several times, chances are you should do something about it. If something’s broken, you need to fix it! Whether it is staff training, a change in your marketing tactic or a different supplier – customer reviews can be used to your advantage.
Sewa, Founder of GSR Cleaning states “we feel appreciated – and have peace of mind that our reputation is growing. We really like the idea of moving away from ‘fake marketing’. I like the idea of people (customers) telling the truth about us.”
6) Encourage Other Reviews
The more positive reviews you have, the less impact each negative review has. Rather than let one negative review attract all the attention, ask some of your happy customers to share their experiences online. Once you have several good reviews, the odd negative review would seem more like an outlier.
Fiona Adler is the creator of WOMO (Womo.com.au), which hosts over 400,000 reviews about businesses across the whole of Australia. It currently has 130,000 business members, receives 1 million website hits a month, and it is estimated that one in four Australians have used reviews on WOMO in the last 12 months to help them find better service.
