How Do You Respond to Negative Reviews?

Reviews are important. As a business owner you know that, but at the same time you don’t want a few negative reviews to tarnish your business. 

As a marketer dealing with businesses 24/7 the number 1 reason why business owners don’t push reviews is “They don’t want to get negative reviews”. They spend all their time and effort trying to deliver the best service possible…they don’t want one upset customer to ruin all their hard work.

Look, I don’t care what business you are in…you will NEVER please every single customer you ever get. It would be nice…but it is statistically IMPOSSIBLE. Therefore getting grey hairs over worrying about that bad review…a business owner should invest time into training his employees on what to do when they do get that bad review.

How to Respond to a Negative Review:

1. Speed – A negative review should be handled IMMEDIATELY. Never more than 2 hours.
2. Keep it simple – In the review response DO NOT get into asking questions. Also DO NOT ask for specifics within the review. You do not want that information all over the internet for anyone to find.
3. Apologize – The customer is always right (even when they are not). Saying something like “I am very sorry to hear about your frustrating experience with (company name). I appreciate you alerting me to this fact and it will be taken care of”.
4. Move the Conversation Offline – The first response should alway be online answering the person’s negative review, but once that has been handled…ALWAYS get the conversation to a personal email or phone call.

If you or any of your staff can do the above, chances are 67% of the time you will be able to salvage that customer and even bring them back to purchase again from your business.

Negative reviews are a part of life and they are going to happen, but if you are prepared to properly handle them…it will not be a problem.

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