Why negative reviews will make you question everything
Have you ever received a negative review from a non-genuine customer? In other words, perhaps it was a fake account or the name used was not someone that you have ever done business with. Have you ever received a negative review from an actual customer – this may have been deserved or it may have been underserved! What did you do about it?
Either way, there is now a negative review for all the world to see and you are in panic mode!
- What have you done to deserve this?
- You work hard every day and someone makes a fake account and leaves a review and they have never met you?
- The customer is not always right and the review is incorrect!
- You feel like your business is going to be ruined.
- How can you leave the internet and still run your business?
- What is everyone going to think?
And probably a whole lot more you could list…..
You may begin to question everything or you may go into attack mode. Please don’t just online and respond to the review in a crazy and rude way this makes you look far worse.
Some tips for you
Always monitor your online world – claim listings for your business so that you will receive an alert when a review is left for your business.
Respond promptly – This means within 24hours of it being posted. Your response may be able to rectify the situation quickly and the person can adjust their review.
Remain objective – Respond calmly, politely and remember that no one wants a negative review. The feedback will always be hard to take and it may just be a blessing as you can rectify a problem you may not have known about.
Take the discussion offline – Respond to the review and contact the customer privately. Come to an agreement and ask the customer to rewrite their review of your business.
Fake reviews – You can contact the location of the review and provide a reason for it to be taken down. If you are asking to have the reviews removed you must provide a reasonable well-versed response, to just say they are fake is often not enough. It may not breach their guidelines and they may not want to take it down so you may be stuck with this fake review (e.g. a one-star rating but no words). Perhaps a series of reviews were left in quick succession or they have weird names.
Remind your customers to leave reviews – Remind your customers to leave you with a review of how happy they are with your products or services. In general, people are trusting of business with above a 4/5 star rating. Meaning that you don’t need a 100% lineup of 5-star reviews. So if your average is 4.2 or 4.5 you should be very happy with that.
Conclusion
- Reviews are great for your business, with Google and Facebook being two very popular spots.
- Reviews can help your Search Engine Optimisation.
- You can share them on your website, newsletter and more.
- Potential customers can see what others think of your businesses products and services.
Take the time to make reviews a part of your business and marketing strategy and try not to be scared of them!
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