Even if you have an excellent product and fantastic customer service, someone will inevitably leave a bad review about your company at some point. It can be aggravating and concerning when this happens, but you can still diffuse any negative perception of your product or service and even turn it to your favor if you address it correctly.
Take a Step Back
It’s important to remove your emotions from the equation right away so that you can assess and resolve the negative feedback before it has a chance to do any harm to your business’ reputation and image. Allow yourself to gain objectivity by looking at the bad review as if you were a person who knows nothing about your company.
How much weight does the review hold? Does it even seem convincing or influential? It’s also really useful to carefully consider the person’s complaint, if what they are saying is accurate. If that is the case, then you can move on to figuring out how best to address it.
Is There Anything You Need to Change?
Before you write off the reviewer and ignore their comments, first look at any problems they had with your product and see if it’s something that you actually need to look into.
Many times, bad reviews are a blessing in disguise because they can shed light on deficiencies or issues that your business needs to resolve.
When to Ignore It
That being said, sometimes people are just having a bad day or get a kick out of posting angry or harmful comments. It can go either way; some negative reviews have merit which deserve your attention, and others are just complaining for the sake of complaining.
When you examine what the person is saying, you can pretty easily tell whether or not it’s something you should pay attention to.
Responding to the Reviewer
When responding to a bad review or comment, this is a good time to be personal, yet diplomatic. First, acknowledge what they’re saying as a valid complaint. Then, thank the person for their feedback and reassure them that you will do anything you can to remedy the problem because you value their business (or something along those lines). It seems like kind of a tired, corny sentiment, but people really do respond well to that reassurance on a basic level.
Finally, if possible, offer the person some kind of reparation or incentive to use your product or service. Even if they decide never to use your business again, you already turned the exchange into a positive interaction.
Best-case scenario, other potential customers who read the review will also see your comments which show your willingness to provide great care to your customers.
Stephanie
Stephanie is the Marketing Director at Talkroute and has been featured in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur as a leading authority on business and telecommunications.
Stephanie is also the chief editor and contributing author for the Talkroute blog helping more than 100k entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses.