What Are The Main Reasons Motivating Consumers
To Leave Negative Reviews?

Let’s take a few minutes to understand fully the motivations of the consumer whenever they leave a negative review for a business.

In this particular survey, consumers were allowed to choose more than one factor:

• Over 74% of consumers expressed a desire to prevent future customers from having the same poor experience.
• Over 52% of consumers simply wanted a refund of their purchase.
• Just over 15% of consumers showed an actual intent to harm the company’s reputation
• Over 45% of consumers wanted the company to be more transparent, forthcoming and honest about their fees and pricing practices.
• Over 37% of consumers expressed a desire for the company to actually change or update their policies.
• And nearly 40% of all consumers were simply looking for an apology or a genuine response to their negative review.

Adding a robust and effective review management system to your business will allow you to listen to your customers and to HEAR what they are saying.

Perhaps one of the more disturbing statistics is the desire for consumers to be HEARD…i.e. nearly 40% of all consumers leaving a less than stellar review were looking for a response. What we don’t know is whether that ‘response’ is merely responding to the online review or actually reaching out to the customer to pursue a remedy for their poor experience. We have to reiterate here….THE INTERNET IS NOT FOREVER when it comes to reviews. Any consumer can log back in and change, edit or delete a review at any time on any platform. Your response window is short here…most consumers we’ve surveyed want that response to come within 48 hours or less. We have seen some recommendations that call for a response within 7 DAYS but we must disagree with that metric in the strongest possible terms. Immediate response is the gateway to resolving the situation. Especially when dealing with a negative review on social media, which is distributed to all followers and friends of the individual in real time. So, you must first have a system in place that notifies you immediately of any review left for your business on any of the many platforms out there. You will then need immediate response capability, along with a protocol in place with management to take an unhappy customer back to ‘happy’ status.

We at Review Control™ sincerely hope that this information was valuable to you as a business owner, and can offer all of the features you’ll need to gain control over your reviews and online reputation.