Don't Put Up With Negative Reviews.
Bad Reviews are Maddening. However, You Can do Something about Them!
A friend in the specialty cleaning/restoration business gave me a phone call.
Hey, Clay." "Hi, Robert." "I've got to read a crazy review to you; it was posted yesterday, "This company's cleaning service is so bad I wouldn't even hire them to empty my cat's litter box."
We both laughed. At the same time, we were also upset because, as business owners, we knew this negative review would impact his business. That's the problem with many negative reviews on platforms like Yelp, Google, etc. They can be influential. Bad reviews can also be challenging to remove.?
Recently, another friend, Dan, called to announce he has formed a new company to help businesses remove damaging review posts. He explained that he had spent several months perfecting these skills.?He had my attention; negative review removal could benefit my clients.
He excitedly shared the details of his journey.?Dan (Dan Bergano, the founder of?Review Refresh),?told me, "The standard response by business owners/customer service agents is to answer a crummy review by writing a polite message or, when the consumers' review was grossly unfair, to strike back by arguing the issues. There's a better first-action approach. Instead of launching into a war of words, communicate with the individual by telephone or face-to-face. Resolve the issue that sparked the lousy review, and the customer will often remove it. My team at?Review Refresh?has also learned that an owner/manager responding may have the unintended effect of lending credence to the reviewer. Depending on the content of the initially posted review, we may recommend that the client take down their response to make our removal process successful."
I put a series of questions to Dan that he clearly and concisely answered.
?Q. How is content removed?
"When harmful review content is removed, it is accomplished by the online platform willingly or by the website's host after we state our client’s case. Typically, the process includes our (Review Refresh)?experts putting a detailed case together and implementing a series of detailed follow-up requests from the publishing platform. Removals regularly require multiple submissions and ongoing correspondence with the online platform." All removals are completed legitimately. There is no hacking or bribery. The individual who wrote the targeted review is never contacted.
?Q. Do you permanently remove the content, or is it just hidden?
?"We?permanently remove the unwanted online content from the platform's website. If our team cannot remove the harmful content, the client will not be charged a removal fee no matter how much work we performed."?
?Q. How about the client removing it?
?"We typically recommend against the client trying to remove the content, making our jobs much more difficult with specific online platforms. Platforms sometimes ignore all future attempts if the first one was unsuccessful. However, we can often remove harmful content with an extra effort when the client has attempted and was unsuccessful. Because we only charge when content is taken down, it's a risk-free approach to let us try another shot at removing the negative and harassing content."?
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Q. Tell me again, why a company shouldn't automatically respond to a terrible review?
"Although almost every major platform will recommend this, it is not a good idea. A response adds more legitimacy to the review and thus makes it more challenging to get the publishing platform to remove it. The social media platforms do not have your best interest in mind. If our attempts are unsuccessful, we may recommend they add a comment to let any prospect researching your business know the real story behind the negative and harassing review. Like I said earlier. First, the client should try to reach out to their customer on a different channel and then let a professional like us remove the review before their time and energy is spent responding.??
Q. What are the challenges you face??
?"First, everyone has to understand that we can't always get the negative postings off the platform. We have a pretty good sense of what we can accomplish, and we're always upfront with our clients. The biggest challenge we face is having to be persistent in our efforts. We don't take no for an answer. We don't stop, and we try again. Dan pointed to two testimonials on the?Review Refresh?website that exemplify his team's tenacity.
Testimonial 1
Online reviews are the lifeblood of any business, and law practice is no different. We hired Review Refresh to clean up and remove some horrible online reviews. They were successful, and they also achieved excellent results very rapidly, which shows their mastery of the online space. I would recommend their services.
?Testimonial 2
Our plastic surgery practice dealt with what we suspect was a targeted competitor attack with fake reviews from individuals we did not recognize. Dan and his team did a fantastic job removing the reviews and doing it promptly, and always staying on top of communication to let us know the process.?
In Conclusion
I’ll work with Dans' agency,?Review Refresh, to remove my clients' bad reviews.
I also plan to give my friend Robert a call to see if he is interested in removing the cat’s litter box review.
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If you would like to reach out to Dan Bergano to learn what he and his Review Refresh team can do for your company's online reputation, contact him at: https://www.reviewrefresh.com