No matter how good your product or service is, how comprehensive your customer service is, and how much customer outreach your company does, negative reviews may be an inevitability for your business.
Knowing this, you should create a plan for how to deal with negative reviews, since trying to stifle them and/or hoping they won’t appear are probably unrealistic. Below are some tips for dealing with negative reviews – read through the list to see which ones can help you. Some of these tips can also act as a guide to creating review response templates.
1. Don’t ignore negative reviews
This is probably the most important piece of advice here. Trying to ignore “the elephant in the room” won’t make it go away. In fact, bad reviews can take root and spread as more people hear negative information. Therefore, just as you wouldn’t turn a blind eye to a condition like termites in your home’s foundation, you shouldn’t ignore bad reviews, either.
2. Always respond to negative reviews
The correct thing to do with negative reviews is to respond to them whenever and wherever possible. Keep your response courteous, and try to be relatively brief in your reply. Believe it or not, a personalized response can bring back 51% of your customers who had negative experiences.
3. The timing of your response is important
The sooner you respond to negative reviews, the better. Tracking data shows that customers like to see companies respond to negative reviews less than a week after they’re posted.
4. Demonstrate that you understand your customer’s point of view
Empathy is the most important trait your responses should have; you want customers who have problems with their orders to feel like you can see things from their perspective. This can help de-escalate issues and conflicts between customers and your business.
5. Maintain a professional demeanor
As stated in the third tip above, it’s important to stay professional – even if a customer is being rude. Your responses should be both genuine and professional. Always take the high road; it will pay dividends, especially in the long term.
6. Highlight any positive points
Not all bad reviews are 100% negative. Many times, a customer will mix praise in with their complaints. Therefore, in your response, you should focus on the positives while working to resolve their issue. By highlighting these and promising to fix problem areas, you can remind readers that your company has a commitment to customer satisfaction.
7. Apologize and/or take further action when it’s appropriate
A business needs to prioritize its customers and do the utmost to resolve each customer’s issues (this can include admitting fault and apologizing when it’s appropriate). Most customers and review readers will see this as a positive step, not a negative one. Likewise, providing a refund or a replacement product or service when and where appropriate can also be a logical course of action.
8. Offer to discuss things privately
Very often, the wisest course of action when responding to a negative review is to provide an email for someone at your company who the complainant can contact directly (or if using a review platform, identify their email and follow up with them).
The reason for this is simple; someone on your team will be able to look into the issue more closely for resolution. The last thing you want is for an online argument to become an epic back-and-forth thread with 10,000 heated responses. Do your company’s reputation a favor, and take things private and/or offline as quickly as possible.
9. If appropriate, ask a customer to revise their review
If it’s possible and when it’s appropriate, consider asking a customer to update their previous review. But be careful; only do this when you believe you’ve fully helped resolve the issue. The time to make this request is after you believe you’ve resolved any complaint they had (up to and including replacing or compensating them for defective or inadequate products or services or negative experiences [see the seventh tip, above]). Before you make this request, always a) make sure it’s possible for the customer to do and b) provide complete, clear instructions for how they can update their review. If a business is using an effective review platform with the right functionality, it should help enable customers to update their reviews.
10. Get a consistent flow of reviews
Reviews are the way to accurately share the heart of your business and amplify what you can offer. When a quality business implements an effective review strategy, it will consequently start getting more good reviews, display positive feedback, and put its best foot forward.
