Managing Negative Reviews
If you run a business, there will come a time when you receive negative reviews. This is something that all businesses have to deal with, but it can cause reputational problems for you. One of the ways you can ease that is by responding to the review. It might even help your dissatisfied client or customer to see things differently.
Responding to Negative Reviews
Negative reviews will always cast a shadow over your business if you don’t deal with them. That means you’ll need to be perceived as responsive, so that future clients and customers think you’re dealing with the issues they raised.
Some points you can keep in mind about this are:
-  Visibility – When you reply to a negative review, it won’t just be read by that particular individual but by members of the public as well.
- Opportunity – If you see a negative review, you can make a positive difference by responding. This is true even if the review and your response are published online.
Problems raised in reviews allow you to fix them. - Engagement – When you deal with negative reviews, it demonstrates that you’re willing to confront the issues that came up, and interact with your client or customer to make things better.
Your response to a negative review needs to be carefully planned so that it has the desired effects on the person who left the review, and the audience reading it. There are some steps to do that which will be discussed in the following section.
Four Steps For Responding To Negative Reviews
1. Use Empathy
Showing that you understand the client or customer and feel bad that they had a negative experience adds a human touch to the situation, which can help brighten their mood.
2. Use Marketing
In your response, you should make sure that you explain the experience that your customers should be having when they deal with you. This is something that other members of your audience will see, and may encourage the person who left the review to come back.
3. Offline Conversations
When you’re commenting on the negative review, give your contact details to the customer or client and tell them to get in touch with a member of staff. That way, they can provide more detail about what happened, so that you can fix it.
4. Be Brief
When addressing a complaint in a review, you shouldn't say more than you need to. Otherwise, you might irritate them or be seen as missing the point. A few sentences will usually do the trick.
Additionally, you should omit the name of your business or any keywords from the response that you give. That will make it less likely to appear in search engine result pages.
Responses Work
Sometimes, your customer or client will end up changing their mind after you deal with them and amend their review. This shows how important responses are. Each negative review is a chance for you to address the problem, market your business, and even gain positive comments in response to your efforts.