Negative Review Best Practices (for Google/Facebook/Yelp)

Responding to reviews is an essential part of reputation management for your business. This task shouldn’t be taken lightly and always handled with the utmost care. Intentions can easily be misinterpreted online – and trying to resolve a customer complaint on an online forum can sometimes escalate an already-tense situation. Without following the best practices of online review response, you could be headed down that slippery slope to feedback failure.

Respond to All Reviews, Good AND Bad

Whether you believe the review was fair or not, it is essential to take action. Not responding to a bad review can really impact your business. Even one bad review can compromise your reputation and can deter potential customers from wanting to work with you. So, whenever a customer leaves a review, make sure to respond politely and quickly. A polite response can oftentimes change the reviewers mind for the better!

Don’t leave your customer waiting – respond!

Responding quickly is important and shows the customer that you care and are genuinely concerned about resolving any issues they may have had with you. Don’t leave them waiting in limbo, go the extra mile and reply to their message. Offer the customer a resolution online – and then suggest you take the conversation offline so that you can resolve the issue without sharing the specifics with an audience.

Don’t Copy and Paste

The customer is not looking for you to write a full novel in response to their review. Capture the idea of the customer’s frustration and write a response that reflects that. Do NOT copy and paste the same response underneath each bad review. Take the time out to address each person and their individual concerns.

 

 

 

Don’t Take It Personally

This is probably the biggest issue for most of us business owners. Someone reaches out about a bad experience with your company and leaves a nasty message for everyone in cyberspace to see. They may even go as far as attacking your business or even a specific employee. Don’t take this personally. The best approach is to simply move forward by flagging their comment as inappropriate. If this is a case of trolling, and an issue that has no merit, flagging their comment and blocking them can help prevent them from coming back to your page on another hate spree.

Now That It Is Fixed, Can You Fix Your Review?

Now that the situation has been resolved, what do you do about that one-star review that is still lingering on your page? Reach out to that customer to see if they are willing to take down or even change their review. A great way to do this is to reach out a few weeks later to remind them. You can even go the extra mile by sending them a follow-up email or calling them directly.

Online customer reviews can make or break customer perception of a business. Make it a priority to actively manage all online reviews that you receive; good and bad.

 

Is Social Media Review Management part of your digital marketing strategy? Call us today at 877-311-5695 to learn how VitalStorm can help.