Follow The Golden Rule With Negative Reviews
Treat people the way you would like to be treated.
I think we can all remember an elementary teacher or parent reciting those words to us as young kids. Let’s just go ahead and translate that into building a business. I get the question a lot about responding to online reviews and how you should do it.
Embrace the poor reviews and own up to a mistake if it was your fault. It shows a lot of character for a business to admit they had a slip up and could actually help to bring in new customers.
Is It Right to Leave a Negative Review?
Have you publicly expressed that on a review site such as Google or Facebook?
I know we all have had a bad experience at a place of business one time or another. It is perfectly okay to express a bad situation you had with a business. Sometimes it helps the business out, after all they have humans working there who make mistakes, errors in judgement happen.
When negative reviews are left the business needs to express their side of the story. They need to accept any fault and offer to correct the problem if possible!
How Should you Respond to a Negative Review?
Be Genuine
If you made a mistake just own up to it. If the customer is leaving some important details then nicely explain what happened. How you respond to a negative review is going to really affect any prospective customers opinion about your business.
Do Negative Reviews Hurt your Business?
Negative reviews don’t have to be all bad.
Here are two reasons why negative reviews may actually help your business:
Reason #1: It adds authenticity to all of your positive reviews. When I see a business with nothing but 5-star reviews I begin to get a little suspicious. A negative or poor review will show the viewer that the business isn’t filtering or buying reviews.
Reason #2: It shows room for improvement! A poor review can show great insight into an area of your business that you were overlooking and now you can improve upon. There are always aspects they need to be done, and a negative review could just be the reminder that you need.
The Golden Rule Needs a Golden Leader
When it comes to your businesses reputation online make sure there is a single person delegated to monitoring and managing ratings and reviews for your business. This might or might not mean they are in charge of soliciting or responding to customer reviews. The point is to make sure you have someone who is focused on reputation management.
Once someone is accountable for responding to reviews, your prospective customers will be more inclined to leave reviews knowing someone is reading them. Make sure you respond to all reviews, it encourages customers which helps increase the number and recency of reviews (which both play a part in motiving patrons to continually rate your business).
Put Your Review Strategy Into Action
Ok, you’re now a review responder expert: you know how to handle negative reviews! No more wasting time asking questions… now you just need to act. If you don’t have any reviews your reviews aren’t recent, or are struggling to get this valuable customer driven content online… then please sign up for our free trial. I would venture to guess you have some reviews in the next few weeks to respond too.
Our free trial is actually free and no credit needed. Sign up now!
