Managing Negative Online Reviews

Negative reviews are an unfortunate fact of life for a consumer-facing business. There is no way that you can avoid this. Customers have a voice and they have lots of places to express their opinions. However, this doesn’t mean you’re helpless before the review gods.

Here are some tips for being proactive with negative reviews:

Monitor your reviews
The obvious first step is to actually look at your reviews. Now, there are a ton of review sites out there, but the MapMeLocal software aggregates all your reviews positive or negative, in real-time so that you can be aware of what customers are saying about you.

Have a process
This may seem like another no brainer, but it is important to know exactly how you wish to deal with both negative and positive reviews before you start getting the reviews. Train management and staff on a first response and follow up customer process, so that every customer leaves satisfied no matter how they showed up.

Ask for reviews
There’s no faster way to get rid of a negative review than to bury it under 100 positive reviews. So, create a plan to ask for reviews from every customer…especially the ones that seem really happy.

Nothing can sink your online reputation faster than having a ton of negative reviews. So, be proactive, know how you’ll deal with unhappy customers, and go get a ton of reviews.

For a free snap shot report on your business reputation online click here and we will send you one absolutely free.