How To Respond To Negative Reviews
Review Software
If you're interested in the review software Kaili mentioned in the video, you can go to reviews.manwaringweb.com or watch a short video about them here.
Video Transcript
So, you got a negative review. Now it’s time to deal with it. No matter what the platform is - Google, Facebook, Bing, Yelp - you cannot just let it sit there to drive away potential customers.
I’m Kaili, and today I’m going to give you some best practices for handling those dreaded negative reviews.
There are two main things that you need to do when you get a negative review:
- respond to it,
- and generate some positive reviews.
The Response
First, let’s talk about that response. We’ve seen negative reviews in all shapes and sizes, from a mild discontent to pure slander - but it’s important for you to keep your response calm and friendly.
Let me give you the basics, and then we can talk about examples.
Always respond to a negative review, and always make the response timely. Don’t wait a month to respond to a negative review. By that point it’s too late. In fact, you should respond to all reviews, positive and negative. For a positive review, just give a little thank you to show the customer that you saw their review and appreciate it.
We have three, sometimes four, best practices for crafting your response to a negative review:
- Acknowledge that you’ve seen the review
- Apologize for their negative experience (even if it wasn’t your fault)
- Invite them to discuss their issues with you personally
- And this fourth one is circumstantial, but if you know the reviewer is not a customer of yours, then say that.
Let’s go over some examples of good responses:
If possible, state their name - it’s more personal and shows that you care who they are.
“(Reviewer name), we’ve seen your review and we are sorry that you had this experience. We would like to discuss this with you further to prevent this from happening again. Please call (manager/authoritative figure) at (insert phone number here) or send us an email at (insert email here).”
A response like this will show not only the reviewer that you care about their experience, but it will show potential customers who read your reviews that you want your customers to have a positive experience with you.
Here’s one more example with the circumstance that you don’t know who this customer is - you have no record of them ever purchasing your goods or services. But, you should only use this type of response if you know with a certainty that you did not serve this reviewer.
“(Reviewer name), we’ve seen your review and we are sorry that you had this experience. However, we don’t have any record of serving “(reviewer name)”. Is it possible that you’ve mistaken us with another company? We would like to discuss this with you further to prevent this from happening again. Please call (manager/authoritative figure) at (insert phone number here) or send us an email at (insert email here)."
Even in this example, we still included all three of the basic best practices, but we also included that part about not having any record of the reviewer.
It’s easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment, especially when you don’t feel what the reviewer stated publicly is true. But don’t ever respond when you are upset. If you need to, step away and ask someone else to craft the response for you.
Getting More Reviews
Now you have this negative review showing up first thing when people click on your business. So what can you do about that?
The next step is to generate some more positive reviews to push that negative review down.
You can hand out business cards or ask customers to leave a review when they leave.
We also have a tool that we use to generate positive reviews. It has the ability to send a review request to customers via text or email and helps you monitor your reviews across all platforms in one place. If you’re interested in learning more about this, give us a call or go to reviews.manwaringweb.com - there will be a link below the video.
However you can - as long as it’s ethical - generate more positive reviews. And this is important whether you have negative reviews or now. If you want to come out above your competitors in local listings, then you should always be trying to get more, current, positive reviews.
If you have any questions about reviews or other suggestions for responding to negative reviews, please give us a call or leave a comment.
Thanks for watching!
