3 Ways to Deal with a Negative Online Review

We all work hard to make our customers happy, so the idea that some are so upset with us that they chose to speak out to the world about it can be painful to deal with.Seeing a customer say bad, often hurtful things about your business on Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, blogs or just about anywhere else can easily create anxiety and shame and put us in panic mode but as online reputations are here to stay, you can’t just ignore them — you have to deal with them, right away.

There’s no way around it: bad reviews happen.

Fortunately, there are ways that small-business owners can minimize the influence of negative reviews and encourage satisfied customers to join the digital conversation.

Here are 3 actions you can take right away to help negate the impact of a bad review:

1. Take immediate action and respond privately directly to the reviewer.

When a lot of businesses get negative reviews, their first course of action is to try and get the review removed.

This is a terrible approach. A bad review isn’t the problem. A bad review is the result of a problem. The real problem is whatever happened between your customer and your businesses that created that result. For real customer service wins, don’t focus on the result; focus on the problem. Treat the upset customer just as you would an upset customer who hadn’t spoken up online: with empathy, compassion and a genuine commitment to making things right.

Use the technique pioneered by the Walt Disney Company, a business that hosts 135 million people in their parks each year, many of them angry parents that have to answer to even angrier five-year-olds.

• Hear: let the customer tell their entire story without interruption. Sometimes, we just want someone to listen.
• Empathize: Convey that you deeply understand how the customer feels. Use phrases like “I’d be frustrated, too.”
• Apologize: As long as it’s sincere, you can’t apologize enough. Even if you didn’t do whatever made them upset, you can still genuinely be apologetic for the way your customer feels (e.g., I’m always sorry that a customer feels upset).
• Resolve: Resolve the issue quickly, or make sure that your employees are empowered to do so. Don’t be afraid to ask the customer: “what can I do to make this right?”
• Diagnose: Get to the bottom of why the mistake occurred, without blaming anyone; focus on fixing the process so that it doesn’t happen again.

This technique was originally designed to be utilized with customers who approach an employee to have a conversation but that conversation is the critical element missing from a one-sided online review. So the key to applying the H.E.A.R.D. Technique to customers who leave bad online reviews is that you need to create that conversation.

2.Respond Publicly, But Not To Defend Yourself.

If you’re considering doing business with a company, and you see a negative review, which approach from the business would make you more confident in becoming a customer?

1. Getting defensive and listing all of the reasons why the upset customer is wrong.
2. Being human, empathetic, apologetic and demonstrating that they genuinely want to make the upset customer happy.

The answer might seem obvious when we look at it from that perspective, which is what makes it amazing to see how many businesses will lash out at seemingly reasonable customers on review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor.

So yes, you should respond publicly, whether on the review platform where your customer posted, or in a comment on their blog, or in response to their social media post.

But that response should be an apology for how they feel, and a request for an opportunity to make things right.

And last but certainly not least — this is the most powerful, yet impactful way to re-build your online reputation after a negative review.

3.Instead Of Trying To Get Bad Reviews Removed, Drown Them Out. Instead Of Trying To Get Bad #Reviews Removed, Drown Them Out. #SEO tips. Click To Tweet

Now is the time to reach out to your current happy customers and ask for reviews, directly on the platform where you’ve received the negative review.Doing this, rather than focusing on getting the review removed or amended.In actuality, it’s found that when a bunch of positive reviews are added after a negative review, the customers who left the bad review end up going back and taking them down, or editing them.

The most important part in dealing with a negative review is to see them as a valuable opportunity to really look at your operations and discover if this is an area you need to improve.Companies grow and need to continually find areas to improve.It’s great to have customers point out our weaker links, so we can fix them and provide better service!

Summary:

1. Take immediate action, don’t ignore it.
2. Work to remedy the problem both publicly and directly with the customer
3. Ask your happy customers to speak up and give you reviews!

and most importantly, don’t take it personally but rather as a learning tool in your path to continuous improvement.