Consumers these days are used to being able to express their opinions about a business anywhere. Websites, such as Yelp and Facebook, make it easy for people to leave reviews. Sometimes, customers will have nothing but praise to give a company. Other times, they will criticize a company in every way. Anyone involved with franchise marketing needs to be ready for the latter.
Negative reviews are a normal part of running a business no matter how good you think you are. You will not get it right every time, but you should know how to respond to negative reviews in a way that salvages your company’s reputation. You do not want to make a bad situation worse by responding poorly and alienating your customers even further.
1. Take a Deep Breath
The first step is to calm down before taking any action. Many business owners get in the habit of seeing a negative review and responding to it right away. Perhaps you have already had a bad day, and this is just the icing on the cake. You want to cool off, breathe deeply, and count to 10 before you respond if you decide to respond at all.
2. Decide If You Should Even Respond
You may find some reviews from people who are clearly going out of their way just to troll you. The opinion may be completely irrational to begin with. You could try going to the reviewer’s page to see if he or she is prone to leaving such reviews. Additionally, you generally do not have to worry about reviews people leave on their obscure blogs. However, you should respond when someone raises a genuine complaint about your business.
For example, if you own a restaurant chain, then someone may leave a review saying something smelled like mold in your establishment. This is a genuine concern because your business will suffer if you do nothing. You also need to watch out for reviews from people who say they have come to your business many times before. Repeat customers are the bread and butter for many businesses. You cannot afford to lose your loyal fans.
3. Have a Response Ready To Go
This does not mean you should have a stock phrase or generic message that you copy and paste in every review response. Customers are savvy enough to know when business owners are disingenuous. Instead, you need a strategy in place for how you will respond to any negative feedback.
First, you should have a team in place that knows where to look for all kinds of reviews across many different platforms. While you do not want a stock phrase, you should know how to respond in a way that is on-brand. All communications should be done in line with your company’s brand values. That way when consumers see your responses, they know there is an actual human behind the keyboard while still maintaining the brand’s professional reputation.
4. Read the Site’s Rules for Businesses
You should be somewhat familiar with what each major review site allows for businesses. Naturally, most sites prohibit any abusive language or profanity. You would not want to engage in those behaviors anyway. There may be other rules that are less obvious, such as responding in all caps. There are also rules for the reviewers. Therefore, it’s recommended to familiarize yourself with the rules for both review parties so you know when someone else has breached the contract.
5. Ask for Inappropriate or False Reviews To Be Removed
You can generally tell when a review has been posted by a bot. Sadly, many business owners get in the habit of leaving bad reviews on competitors’ pages to draw in more business for themselves. If you believe that has happened to you, then ask the website to take down the review.
You should keep in mind that it may take days or even weeks for the website to respond. At the end of that time, the website may disagree and believe the review is genuine. You still need to be proactive to salvage your company’s reputation.
6. Apologize
Above all else, a simple apology goes a long way. It is vital to remember that you and everyone who works for you is human. People make mistakes, and while your service is ordinarily immaculate, one customer may have had a bad experience. The first thing you should do is respond to the bad review where you take responsibility for what happened. Humility is key here. This is the first step to trying to win the customer back.
7. Respond As Soon as Possible
You need people monitoring your company’s review pages at least once a day. In today’s digital age, people expect everything to be instant. You need to respond to any negative reviews shortly after you see them. By waiting, you risk other people seeing the negative review without your response. Other people who have not even tried your business yet may assume you do not care about consumers’ experiences. The longer the wait, the farther the news will spread.
8. Research What Happened
If the customer had a sincere problem with an employee or a particular incident occurred, then you need to see for yourself what transpired. You should talk to your employees to get their sides of the story. It is possible the customer had a few things wrong. It is vital when talking to employees about this matter that you do not come across as hostile. You need honest feedback to be better in the future, and you typically will not get that if your workers are afraid there will be serious consequences for one mishap.
9. Understand the Customer’s Viewpoint
It is possible there is a perfectly logical explanation for what happened. For example, a customer may have ordered a sandwich he thought was supposed to be hot when in actuality it is supposed to be cold. The customer, not knowing any better, leaves behind a negative review. Even though the customer is wrong in this case, you still want to put yourself in his shoes. Do not be rude or condescending.
10. Respond Privately First
Initially, you want to send a private message. There is no need to air more dirty laundry at first. In this message, you want to introduce yourself and state what your role at the business is. You want to thank the reviewer for being a customer and for leaving feedback. You then need to apologize sincerely for the incident and outline what you will do better.
In your response, you want to invite the customer to come back. The goal for all of this is to try to retain that person as a regular customer. You want to insist that things will be better next time. You may be surprised how open consumers will be.
11. Offer an Incentive
When you apologize, the only way to get someone to return may be to offer an incentive. For example, most restaurants should offer a customer a free meal upon returning. When the customer returns, you want to be certain everything goes perfectly. When the customer visits, you do not want it to come across like you are trying to buy good reviews. The customer may not leave you a good review to replace the bad one, and that is all right. At the very least, you will have retained a customer.
12. Respond Publicly
After you have sent a private message, you can leave a public message that directly responds to the review. This is the message other people will see. You can outline in this message the steps you have taken to rectify the situation. It is possible the person you messaged will not respond at all. Plenty of people only leave a couple reviews on Yelp and then log out forever. You want to make it clear to outsiders reading about your business that you took steps to make the situation better.
13. Take the High Road
Think about how you would respond to criticism from someone physically inside your store. Would you be loud, aggressive and rude? You would not because you realize other people are around who will make their own judgments regarding your behavior. The Internet is exactly the same. In all your responses, you want to be quick, quiet and professional. You do not want any anger to come across in your message.
This tip is beneficial for the private message, too. If you are combative in the private message, there is a chance the person will likely post that online, too, for everyone to see. Nothing online is ever private. Nothing online ever goes away, so you need to be aware of how your tone comes across.
14. Learn From the Mistake and Move On
You could respond perfectly to a negative review, and the person may never come back to your business again. The most important thing is to never dwell too long on these reviews. The most successful business owners take bad reviews, learn from them, and get on with their lives. The only thing you can do is make sure the incident the reviewer described does not happen again.
It is vital to realize that most consumers will not pay attention to the negative if a majority of people have glowing reviews for your business. Consumers are smart enough to know that some people are just crabby and cannot be satisfied no matter what. You mostly need to be worried when a lot of people are posting negative reviews. This is when you have a legitimate problem with your business that needs to be corrected promptly.
Use Online Reviews to Your Advantage
Having a presence on online review sites will work wonders for your company’s SEO plan. You can get additional assistance by reaching out to the professionals at V Digital Services. We can help you manage your company’s online reputation so that consumers only see the good. For more information on how we can do this, contact us today.
Article updated on Feb 1, 2024