The ONLY Proven Tactics For Addressing Bad and Negative Reviews Against Your Business

Anytime a business provides products or services to consumers, mistakes are going to happen. Poor service, misunderstood pricing, a bad meal, or a defective product. It’s happened to all of us.

People at large react in different ways, but the internet and the ever-increasing number of review sites and social media make it very easy for an angry or dissatisfied customer to vent their frustrations and cause lasting damage to your business and image.

So let’s just say that you just received a negative review about your business:

It is at THIS moment that you, as a business owner or management, need to keep a clear head and have a proven method for dealing with the unhappy camper.

THE FIRST RULE of addressing a bad review is to TAKE IT OFF LINE! Don’t FREAK OUT or respond in anger. NEVER create a debate or an argument with a customer in the review response stream. No matter how wrong you think the criticism is. Here is one of the great examples of a business owner gone completely off the rails due to bad reviews and online trolling (If you’ve never seen this episode it’s worth a watch, and go take a look at the online reviews for Amy’s Baking Company in Arizona. You’ll quickly see why fighting online with your customers is not a good idea!)

 

What you really need to do is provide a TIMELY,  apologetic and short response to the review itself online. Offer a remedy if it’s appropriate, like a refund or a replacement product or service. But the real key to fixing this situation is to engage the customer directly and offline whenever possible. Ask them to call you on the phone or to set up a time to come by your place of business to discuss the problem. Here is our most recent research on WHY customers leave bad reviews, and their true motivations. This insight will help you dealing with that inevitable negative review with understanding and a PLAN OF ACTION:

REMEMBER–When it comes to reviews, THE INTERNET IS NOT FOREVER!

Many times you can persuade your customer to log back into the review source and amend their original review. Or even delete it and leave a fresh review. This is most critical on social media where the original review is disseminated amongst the customer’s friends and connections immediately.

The second part of your strategy needs to be a constant effort to elicit positive reviews from your happy customers. Our research has proven that in most cases as many as 90% of your satisfied customers never leave a review!

Assuming that a bad review is there to stay, your mission needs to be one of dilution. Because it will take at least 10 positive reviews to negate the effect of a bad review in your ratings average. Drowning a bad review with a number of good reviews is your best default strategy.

And since we also know that Google has adjusted their search algorithm to put a heavy emphasis on reviews, you will now need to be doing this anyway in order to raise or maintain a high search ranking and visibility and continue to attract new customers.

Tracking, responding, requesting and addressing your reviews can be overwhelming without a proper system in place. There is also the issue of fake reviews and you’ll definitely need help with those.

The good news is that there is now Review Control™ Review management services. The very best, most robust and extremely affordable solution to all review and reputation management needs. More than just a scraper service for monitoring of reviews, Review Control™ is interactive and allows you to do real-time management of your reviews across all the important sites that affect your business. Our experienced customer support staff will be there to assist you in all aspects of your review management to keep your image and reputation in great shape.

Contact us for a short, no-obligation demonstration of the system that has taken the review management space to the next level. Don’t let your lack of attention in this matter dictate the fate of your business. Let us help you get CONTROL.