In the last marketing tip, I wrote about why reviews are important to a business. In this week’s marketing tip, I’ll talk about what to do when there’s a bad review.
When deciding whether or not to implement online reviews, many businesses worry about the impact of bad reviews. Bad reviews are a fact of business, whether you have a brick-and-mortar store, an eCommerce business, or a combination of both. It’s hard to please all customers all of the time.
Negative feedback is something you should not shy away from – it may even help your business.The one thing you shouldn’t do about negative reviews is ignore them. Instead, follow these steps:
- Don’t panic! Remember that negative reviews are not that bad, and they can actually help your business.
- Resist the urge to remove negative reviews. It’s natural to have some unhappy customers, and posting the negative reviews you’ve received shows you have nothing to hide.
- Respond to negative reviews publicly. Show that you care about the issue and have resolved it with a public response.
- Learn from negative product and business reviews. Is there anything you can learn about your products or service from the negative feedback? Stop bad business reviews at the source by addressing any core issues.
- Follow up. Make sure you follow up after the issue has been addressed to ensure the customer is happy with the resolution of their issue. Turn a negative into a positive.
- Get more good reviews. Research shows that 86% of reviews are 4 or 5 stars. This shows that getting more positive reviews is simply a numbers game. You just need to get more reviews, period.
What can you take away from this? Negative reviews aren’t that bad. They can help your business, they’re easy to handle and you can easily combat them by just getting more reviews in general (because we know most of them will be good!).