How to Handle Negative Customer Reviews

With reviews encouraged by businesses, it’s all wonderful if they’re positive but what happens when you get a bad review?. Do you ignore it, or maybe even delete it if you can?

Here’s the thing, a review based on an experience with your company is always subjective. What one person views as an amazing service another might think it as average. And that’s something you’re going to have to accept. However, if you get a review that is truly negative, what should you do?

The Offline Complaint

For now, let’s look at how you’d handle someone standing in your shop complaining. What do you do? You handle it. And how you handle the complaint will be down to what the complaint is and what you can do to resolve the situation.

Now just imagine what would happen if that same person stood in your shop and complained but you chose to ignore them. What’s the chances that they end up becoming far angrier? By ignoring them you’ve just escalated the situation.

The same applies online!

The Online Complaint

Regardless of whether you get a positive or negative review online, it requires a response. And while a positive one is easier to respond to, you didn’t get to be a business owner without having some skills when dealing with customers. So, use them!

Customer Service

Something to remember is, we are all entitled to our own opinion and sometimes in some situations our opinion might seem unreasonable to others – in this scenario, that’s you, the business owner. If you believe an online review is unreasonable, regardless of how you feel, your response should begin with “We’re sorry you’ve had that experience…” and follow it up with a non-emotive response that is working towards a resolution.

Always remember that others will see your interactions online which is why you need to ensure what they see is your stellar customer service skills.

And lastly, it can sometime hurt, particularly if you are a small business owner, to see a negative review that seems unreasonable. Rather than answer when feeling that hurt, step away from the screen, go get yourself a coffee, chat to someone, then straighten your shoulders, smile (believe me it works) and then and only then, sit back down to write a response that you are proud to stand over.

To your success!