Depending on what industry you’re in, positive customer feedback
on user review sites like Yelp, Google Places, and social media can
have a big impact on your business. For small restaurants, local
service companies, and mom and pop retailers in particular, those
compliments and four and five star reviews deliver the social proof needed to establish a good
reputation and drive in new customers.
As we have witnessed firsthand, there is also the flipside to
these sites: the negative customer reviews. Sometimes these
complaints are legitimate. Sometimes they’re not. While sites
including Yelp use filters to block what appear to be fake reviews,
there’s really nothing the business can do to stop users from
posting anything they want – as long as it’s not profane.
If and when you get one, how should you respond to a negative
online review?
Step 1: Claim your business profiles
If you haven’t already done so, claim your business’s page on
the user review site. Doing so will give you greater control over
the information on your profile, and you’ll be able to monitor
activity and respond to negative reviews. The process of claiming
these sites is simple and straightforward:
- Search the review site (Yelp, Google Places, Angie’s List etc.)
for your business and click on your profile
- Find and click on the link asking if this is your business or
prompting to manage the page
- Fill out any required information and complete the
authorization process (this is typically either an automated phone
call or mail confirmation)
Step 2: Take a deep breath
There’s a 98% chance that if you get a bad customer review
online, the first thing you’ll want to do is go online and publicly
obliterate the credibility of whoever the clearly insane person is
who would dare speak negatively about your business. While it
probably sounds like a cathartic experience, this is not a good
idea.
Even if there’s zero truth to your negative review, you have
nothing to gain and much to lose by going on the offensive with
your response. Before you start writing a single word, take a
moment to make sure you are calm and clear-headed.
Step 3: Craft your (civil) response
Consider your bad review an opportunity to showcase and improve
your customer service. If the complaint has any shred of truth to
it, start your public response with a sincere apology. Assure your
customer that you appreciate their business, that you are taking
their complaint seriously, and that you are working to resolve the
problem so that it won’t happen again. (It’s probably a good idea
to actually follow through with this, too.) Most rational people
don’t expect businesses to be able to please everyone 100% of the
time; if there is a complaint and users can see that you are
engaged and care about their satisfaction, you should be able to
minimize the damage from the rare negative online review.
If the complaint is unfounded, keep a civil tone while assuring
the user (and anyone visiting your page) that the accusations are
incorrect. You should not apologize if your business was not
in the wrong, but if you choose to ignore misleading negative
reviews, other users might assume that the reviewer was rightfully
upset and that your business didn’t even care enough to
respond.
Beyond the negative review and the complaining customer, social
review sites function on a larger level as a piece of your
marketing, and they are part of the face you present to your
audience. This is why it’s important not to fight back. Regardless
of the nature of the complaint, keep in mind that your response
will affect potential future customers as much or more than it will
affect the complaining customer. In just about any imaginable
circumstance, the viewers of the review will think highly of your
business if you respond professionally, and they’ll think poorly of
your business if you respond unprofessionally.
Have you had any negative online reviews? How did you
respond?
Charlie Nadler
Simple Machines Marketing
