7 Tips for Successfully Responding to Negative Online Reviews

 Posted on September 25, 2017 in Reputation Management

At some point, every business has to deal with disgruntled or unsatisfied customers. While interactions with these customers were once limited to phone calls or in-person complaints, the nature of our online world means that negative reviews left by unhappy customers are publicly available for everyone to see, and they can have a major impact on a company’s bottom line.

Studies have shown that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and that a company risks losing as much as 22% of their business if a there is a negative review on the first page of their search results. This means that it is incredibly important to respond quickly to negative reviews. But even if you are unable to rectify a customer’s complaint, following these reputation management tips will help you get the most out of these interactions:

1. Stay calm - It can be tempting to respond in anger and attack the person who left a negative review, but this will only make things worse. Take the time to calm down and respond rationally to the customer’s issues, even if you do not believe the review was left in good faith.

2. Always respond to negative reviews - It can be tempting to ignore a negative review and hope that nobody else will notice it, but not responding to a review is a response in itself. Failing to respond will not only further alienate the customer, it will also show others that you do not care about a customer’s issues. When you do respond, take your continuing interactions offline, communicating with the customer via email or another method rather than having a lengthy back and forth discussion in a public forum. 

3. Embrace the opportunity for customer interaction - Use this chance to learn about how you can improve your products or services and demonstrate that you care about your customers. Even if you are unable to satisfy this customer, you can show that you take people’s complaints and feedback seriously.

4. Have some standard review responses ready - It can be a good idea to have some review response templates prepared to ensure that you follow your company’s guidelines and stay consistent in your responses. However, this does not mean that you should use the same set of responses to every review; instead, use these templates as a starting point, then create a customized response that addresses a customer’s specific complaints.

5. Have someone else read your response - Before publicly responding to a negative review, you may want to have a friend or colleague look at your response to make sure you are conveying the correct tone and providing answers that someone will want to hear. 

6. Ask them to change their review - After you have addressed someone’s complaints and resolved their problems, politely ask them to edit their review and change their rating to reflect their experience. A negative review turned positive may have even more impact than one that was positive in the first place.

7. Get some more positive reviews - If you are unable to resolve the customer’s complaint, you should work to get more positive reviews that can push the negative review off the first page of search results and improve your overall rating. Make it easy for customers to leave positive reviews by including links to your company’s Yelp or Google My Business page on your website.

Contact the Online Marketing Professionals at OVC

By monitoring the reviews you receive and responding quickly to every review, you can show people the importance you place on your customers’ experience, and high average review scores can also improve your ranking in search results. If you want to know how the online marketing team at OVC Lawyer Marketing can help you manage your reputation and respond to reviews, contact us online or call us at 630-635-8000.

Sources:

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/customer-experience/why-you-must-answer-every-negative-review/

https://www.brightlocal.com/2017/08/23/how-to-respond-to-negative-reviews/

https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/09/online-reputation-crisis.html