How to Prevent or Respond to Negative Reviews as a Broker?

As a real estate broker, you are well aware of the importance of clients’ testimonials and reviews of your services, right? But what about negative reviews that come unintendedly to your website or other social platforms? How do you deal with them to protect your brand image as a broker?

The real estate business is not that easy to maintain or scale positively. Property investment is more personal to your customer than other businesses. They prefer your advice while investing their hard-earned money. That’s why it is common to be impatient and give negative reviews even with little discomfort. You can’t avoid them but how you deal with such reviews will help in shaping your successful real estate career.?

Positive and negative reviews both have a powerful impact on your prospect’s decisions. As per the?Statista survey , 92% of people agreed that a negative online review put their decisions down while making purchases. So, take a negative review as a big red flag to your business growth.

But the question is how you prevent your business from these negative reviews or what if any negative feedback comes?

In this blog, we have comprised an elaborative solution for dealing with negative reviews. Now, let’s discuss: –

• What are the most common review websites to keep track of your business feedback?
• Proven ways to handle a negative real estate review positively.
• And last, how to prevent negative reviews as a property manager?

The most common review websites that you must be aware of are: –

There are hundreds of review websites running on the internet. They have their own share of market size and niche but few of them have a strong impact on the brand value of online businesses.?As a broker, you should be aware of the websites or platform that has a strong impact on the real estate business. And try to maintain a good rating or feedback report on these particular ones.

Now, let’s start with top review websites and social platforms that you should keep track of: –

Realtors.com

Realtors.com is a prominent?real estate listing ?website that has a great impact on the real estate industry. With over 100 million active users, Realtors.com help you to make a strong presence in the property market.

It gives a fair chance of reviews or feedback to both realtors and customers through a strong screening of every review before posting on profiles.?However, if a negative review is posted you can’t remove it, but you can professionally handle it through a strategic reply or solve it personally.?

Zillow

Zillow is a real estate marketplace to list or advertise your properties. It also has a review system for brokers’ profiles to give ratings according to their property performances. Now, here you can’t directly remove a negative review from your profile, but surely get help from the?mortgage support team ?of Zillow.

Google My Business

Google My Business is the most popular business listing platform to list any business free of cost. Its review process is open to every user which has a strong impact on your company’s reputation.?but as with other platforms, you can’t remove any feedback directly from your profile until they violate any policy of the website.

Facebook business

Facebook business is the meta business suite for business managers to place ads from their business Facebook profile. Its reviews feature also does not give direct permission to delete reviews, but you can report them as spam if are genuine.

Your own website

Your property business website is best to represent positive feedback from your customers. And it gives you full control to showcase your business in the best way. But if negative feedback comes, be careful not to remove it simply. Because you have control of your website but not a reviewer’s accessibility to other social platforms.

So, deal with your customer’s negative reviews carefully on your website to avoid any social discomfort.

Now, you know all the common review sites to maintain your business profile ratings, it is important to know how you deal with them. Cautiously dealing with negative reviews can give you a good opportunity to represent yourself as a responsible property manager. So, to change your negative feedback into positive one, here are some proven strategies to implement.

Proven ways to handle a negative real estate review positively.

1. Verify and acknowledge the review

The initial step, when you spot a negative review about your business is to verify the feedback. If it is genuine or not? If you find it spam or just posted to defame you, then strictly report it to as per platform policy. But if it is genuine feedback from your customer, then you should immediately acknowledge the issue and try to resolve it on your end.

2.?Respond quickly

A quick response to any negative comment can give relief to the reviewer that at least, you have acknowledged it. Now, the ball is in your court. How do you deal with the customer’s inconvenience and what steps do you choose to resolve it?

You have to comment on the negative review to show your seriousness about your business. and be thankful to the reviewer that he/she has raised a genuine concern and you are eager to resolve it as soon as possible. This will change the scenario of negativity and show positive dealing from your side, which is a must in real estate to gain trust.

3.?Regularly check review sites

Keep a regular check on all the review websites and motivate your customers to give more and more positive feedback about your business. it will help to maintain your business ratings on a positive side. If any negative reviews are posted will immediately come to your concern only when you are proactive.

If any review remains unheard it will heat up the matter and adversely affect your business. So, keeping a regular check on reviews is a must.

4.?Don’t be defensive

Whenever you respond to any negative review or comment don’t be defensive in any way. Just take it as a suggestion and try to resolve it practically. If things are not in your control, then simply apologize and show the real reason for this inconvenience.

Because being defensive all the time will represent you as a bad problem solver. So, to handle your negative reviews positively, you must be practical in your approach.

5.?Try to resolve it personally

Now, while resolving any negative review, take the discussion away from the social platform and try to connect with the customer personally. It will save you to be in a socially detrimental situation. It will give you more time to resolve the issue and can surely turn the situation in your favor.

At last, here are some ways to prevent negative testimonials that a property manager should know. If you prevent yourself from negative feedback in the initial stage, then it will help you to represent yourself as a responsible real estate broker.

How to prevent negative reviews as a property manager?

Be proactive: –

Being proactive in your business whether it is dealing with clients or responding to prospects’ queries will help you to represent yourself as a leader. You know your real estate business better so, the issues be. Now, it is your call to deal with customers’ issues actively, to not give them a chance to negatively review your services publicly.

To avoid this, you can create a system to review customers’ feedback at every stage of dealing to avoid any inconvenience.

Listen to your customers: –

Always listen to your customers carefully.?It helps you to know the genuine problems or when your customer is in discomfort. Because property transactions are hard to handle, not just for a broker but for a customer also. So, take care of your customer’s situation and try to build a trusting relationship for a successful deal with positive feedback.

Emphasize positive testimonials.

Taking positive reviews and posting them to your social profiles is part of your real estate marketing strategy. But if you are in the initial stage, try to respond to your customers’ queries proactively and take reviews of every single step to personally monitor your business reviews.

When you have enough positive reviews on social platforms to maintain ratings then one or two negative reviews won’t affect it. But take negative’s cautionary to improve customer satisfaction.

Wrap-up: –

Having negative reviews is not bad, moreover, it shows that your business is genuine. But how you deal with them will show your sincerity about your business and customers. So, be careful while replying to negative feedback and try to resolve them as soon as possible.

Now, tracking every activity on all social platforms is not easy. You need relevant management software that helps you to track all the activities of your business or website cautiously.?Here ProBro can help you to be a proactive real estate broker without much effort.

ProBro ?is an AI-based property management software that helps brokers and property managers to manage their overall property business in a single platform. Here you will get an integrated CRM system to collectively track your all-social activities and your website performance in a visual dashboard. It will give you a clear view of your property business and ease your customer management process to avoid negative reviews.

So, upgrade your property business now, and build your positive brand image with?ProBro .?