How To Reply To Negative Reviews On Social Media – Online Reputation Care
Online reviews on websites such as Google, Facebook, Yelp and Trip Advisor offer users the opportunity to share their experiences not only with companies but also with other consumers. Consumers rely on these reviews to discover great companies, products, services, and brands. Therefore, it is extremely important for companies to learn negative review management and review removal techniques as well as how to react to positive customer feedback.
Negative review management is very important before those reviews drive away some of your customers. Doing this will instantly improve consumer perception and increase the likelihood of people visiting your business locations.
Negative reviews of your company can be both emotionally and financially painful. We all work hard to make our customers happy, so it can be painful to deal with the idea that some are so mad at us that they chose to speak to the world about it. Sometimes we should have to remove these kinds of reviews by using some review removal techniques.
You can deal with negative reviews in many ways:
The first rule in dealing with negative reviews is not to take them personally.
Because as your business grows, you will see more of it.
If you have 100 reviews and five of them are bad and you let those five get through, how do you deal with 50 bad reviews out of 1,000 or 500 bad reviews out of 10,000?
Address the Reviewer
Customers always want to be heard individually and addressed personally. So do not forget your salutation and if possible, avoid the general “Dear guest” or “Dear customer”.
Say Thank You
Show your customers that your company values open, unsolicited feedback. Always remember to say thank you for replies to reviews (even the bad ones).
Apologize and Sympathize
An apology shows that you care about your customers and are not too proud to admit your mistakes.
Even if it’s not your fault, apologize anyway. This is a great opportunity to build and strengthen trust between your company or brand and the customer. Also, people are often put off by companies that are too perfect or too proud to apologize.
Take Responsibility
Don’t make excuses. Even if it was an unusual case, an isolated incident, an unfortunate incident or a day off – write down the customer’s experience. At the same time, pay attention to high standards.
Make Things Right
While doing negative review management, you have to avoid responses that do not include cookie cutter responses that do not resolve or address specific issues addressed in the review. Include details about the customer’s experience in your response (if relevant) and share any changes or improvements you have made or will make based on the feedback.
Take the Issue Offline
It is always best if you and your customer speak directly about the problem and take the problem offline. This saves you further embarrassment with regard to the problem and prevents external disturbances. For this reason, you should include direct customer contact information in your review response.
Ask for A Second Chance
Don’t slam the door to negative reviewers. Instead, reach out a (digital) hand. Ask them to come back and greet them with open arms if they do.
Many times the negative review directly attacks some employee’s personal life by mentioning them by their name or any appearance rather than services, in that case use review removal techniques to remove those negative review.