It’s the beginning of the work week. You’re one step ahead of the sunrise and you’re slowly sipping your first cup of coffee to get energized. You log onto your desktop and instantly, you’re met with the kind of metaphorical gut punch that ruins Monday morning momentum. Your business has been hit with a bad review online.
No one likes getting bad reviews, but they’re a reality all business must contend with – and, in the long run, if handled correctly, they can actually be of benefit to your business. To best handle a review, be it positive or negative, real or fake, there’s a protocol that can be followed to ensure the best possible outcome.
Remain calm and project professionalism.
You didn’t even see it coming. When you’re working hard day-in-and-day-out and striving for excellence, it can almost feel like a personal attack to get a bad review. You may be worried that even one online ding to your reputation could be enough to turn away potential customers.
The first thing to keep in mind is that, a negative review typically isn’t a personal attack. No matter the motive or the means by which someone submitted their negative review, you want to remain calm, and collected. Keep it professional or you’re better off not responding to the complaint at all. It’s upsetting to get a fake or negative review but how you respond is a reflection of the company. Keep in mind, securing business is more important than getting the last word.
Verify the authenticity of the review.
Your first sentiment is likely to be a desire to have the negative review taken down. Of course, this isn’t always possible. You can however, always respond. Before you take any further action, your company’s communications team should take some time to do a little research and verify the legitimacy of the review and/or the reviewer’s identity.
Search internal customer records and/or sales logs to try and identify the reviewer in question. Response time is critical and this is a cursory investigation to simply verify authenticity. You’re looking for one of the following conditions to be true:
- Yes, the reviewer is a customer and there is no known issue.
- Yes, the reviewer is a customer, and it’s been established that there was an issue.
- No, the reviewer is not a customer, and no one at the company knows who they are.
Offer an initial response.
Properly handling online reviews requires timely attention and your next step should be to offer an initial response to the review in question within 24 hours. It’s a best practice to have canned responses prepared for the aforementioned conditions. Here are three examples:
- If the review is real, but positive:
Hi, {{NAME}}. Thanks for being our customer. It has always been a pleasure working with you. We are so glad that you have had a pleasant experience with us. Have a wonderful day and we look forward to continuing to serve you into the foreseeable future. - If the review is real, but negative:
Hi, {{NAME}}. We take these matters very seriously. We are investigating this issue further, and will respond as quickly as possible. If you have contacted us via customer support channels and have not received a satisfactory response, please call us by phone ({{YOUR COMPANY PHONE}}) and we will work to resolve this as quickly as possible. - If the review is fake/spam:
Hi, {{NAME}}. We take these matters very seriously. If you were a client of ours, we would like to locate your customer record and investigate this issue further. Please reach out to our customer support department ({{YOUR COMPANY EMAIL}}) or by phone ({{YOUR COMPANY PHONE}}) so that we can address your concerns as quickly as possible.
Determine an appropriate course for further action.
Positive Reviews:
Positive reviews aren’t as common as negative ones. That’s just a pesky fact of how negativity bias impacts human behavior. That said, when you get a positive review, don’t underutilize it! Positive reviews can offer constructive feedback on what your business is already doing right and provide an opportunity to further reinforce the strength of a positive business relationship or generate a new sale.
If you recognize the customer, greet them the next time they come in. If you use a loyalty marketing solution for your retail store, provide the customer a “thank you” gift of extra loyalty points or a discount on their next purchase. If the customer had something really good to say and their contact information is available, a friendly phone call can carry greater benefit than an email response.
No matter what, take the time to personally thank the customer for their review. While you’re at it, find out how the customer is doing and if there is anything more you can do for them. The customer will not forget your personal outreach.
Negative Reviews:
While you should respond to positive reviews, it’s imperative that you address the negative ones. When customers aren’t unhappy, your stores can suffer. If you’ve established that the negative review in question was posted by a customer and you’ve been able to verify their identity, you need to address the customer’s concerns promptly. Doing this in a timely manner will mitigate any further chaos.
While you should respond to positive reviews, it’s imperative that you address the negative ones.
Before reaching out to the customer, you or someone in your customer service department should work to gather more details on the customer’s situation; determine whether or not the customer’s concerns are warranted. Your findings should be discussed and, if the situation is deemed severe enough, the case should be escalated for a store manager to handle directly.
Now, it’s time to follow up with the customer directly. If you’re able to access their contact information via your customer loyalty and marketing solution, then a phone call is the best way to resolve the case. During the resolution call determine their level of satisfaction, and find out what your company could have done better. Their feedback may provide insight into company issues you weren’t aware of.
Once the issue with the customer is resolved, if the customer is amenable, it’s worth asking them if they’d be willing to update their review.
After the customer’s case has been brought to satisfactory resolution, you or your communications team should post a second company response to the online review, noting that the issue has been resolved. A brief explanation of how it was handled would be beneficial for the public to see.
Fake Reviews:
NOTE: On Google, a flagged review must be determined to be in violation of Google’s content policy.
Fake reviews are fake news. There’s a strong case to be made that spam reviews disprove the proverb “all press is good press.” Let’s say that you are unable to substantiate the review in question. The Internet is overloaded with trolls and spammers, so if a review isn’t legitimate, your first course of action should be to flag it as spam.
If you are able, have several people flag the review in question. There’s power in numbers and it’s possible this may help increase awareness of the situation, and ideally, action. Once a review has been flagged, wait three business days for a response or for the review to be removed.
If a fake review is not removed using the flagging method, get in touch with a customer support associate at the website where the review appears. You’ll need to be able to show the following when making your case:
- why the content in question is false,
- how it violates Google’s policies,
- why the content should be removed,
- any images, links, or other details that backup your claim.
At this juncture, nothing more can be done but you’ll have at least have peace of mind knowing that you’ve done your best to rectify the situation.
Finally, keep in mind: crisis can equal opportunity.
Keep in mind that a negative review isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes a negative review can net more benefit than even a positive review. Consider the following:
- If the review provides honest feedback about store processes, the content of the review can be studied to improve the quality and efficiency of store operations.
- Negative reviewers often alter or delete their reviews after reaching a higher level of satisfaction by having their concerns addressed promptly.
- If you can address the concerns and/or complaints of the reviewer in a public way, your prompt attention and service may be noticed by others.
- Negative reviews can actually help to create a sense of trust. Someone browsing your online listings may be distrustful of high marks if they see only positive reviews. This can result in people questioning the authenticity of reviews your company has received.
Seeing a few sprinkles of negative reviews builds a level of trust.
As long as you’ve put the above protocol in place, and as long as you respond in a timely manner, the bulk of your online reviews (both positive and negative), should be seen not as a bane to your business, but a boon. Another crisis averted, you can now refill your coffee cup and continue onward to conquer the work week.