How to Handle Negative Online Reviews
By Hagen Weiss
Online reviews are a crucial aspect of any company’s success.
Just take a look at these stats, and you’ll see why:
As you can see, reviews are vital because it provides you with social proof. Also, revenue is ultimately correlated with your online reviews. This is why companies need to have a good grasp of how to handle negative online reviews.
Here are some steps to take if you receive a negative online review.
1. Respond to Each Review
Each negative review deserves a response. This is not only good customer service, but it also shows those browsing your reviews that you care. The worst thing you can do is to ignore the review.
2. Make it Personalized
People can detect templates or canned responses from a mile away. If every response to negative reviews is the same, customers will question your sincerity. Address them personally (e.g., “Hi Timothy…”) and actually engage in their issue.
3. Apologize
Apologize for how your customers felt about their experience. Note, you should do this even if you were not responsible. Whatever the case may be, your customer did not have a positive experience with your company. Empathy goes a long way in winning back your customer.
4. Keep it Cordial and Professional
Your first response may be to be defensive or combative over some things said about your company. This may lead you to post nasty attacks on your customer. Resist that urge. Remember, online reviews are on public platforms. Do not tarnish your company image by name-calling or using expletive language. Instead, be professional and courteous in how you speak.
5. Take it Offline
After you respond with a personalized apology, you should take the issue offline with your customer. A public review forum is no place to figure out the details of what went wrong. Moreover, others reading the thread of responses can easily misinterpret the context of the situation. Instead, reach out to your customer either through phone or email to work on a solution.
6. Go Above and Beyond
Do what you can to win back your customer. Offer compensation for the hassle they had to deal with. This can include offering extra credits, a money-back guarantee, or free add-ons on their next purchase.
7. Request Customer to Update Review
If you resolve the problem with your customer, request them to remove the negative feedback or update it with a positive review. This type of review is especially powerful because it shows you went the extra mile to resolve your customer's issues.
8. Improve Your Business
Fixing negative online feedback does your business no good if you don’t learn from your mistakes. Take the negative review as a learning experience to improve your business.
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