Five Ways For Businesses To Deal With Negative Online Reviews

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You can run the most customer service-oriented small business ever and you'll likely still receive an occasional bad review on a business rating website like Google, Yelp, Angie's List or TripAdvisor.

Sometimes, in fact most of the time, these poor online reviews don't even seem valid. Maybe the person leaving the review didn't say anything about a problem when they were in your restaurant or store so you could correct it. Maybe the issue was solved and you thought the customer went away happy, but they still left less-than-stellar feedback. Bad reviews can leave you feeling helpless.

And when these reviews are posted online, they can be embarrassing. You don't want potential customers who read them to think your business is broken or doesn't care about them. Even though you might like to ignore bad reviews, you can't. Close to 88% of consumers are known to trust online reviews as much as personal, word-of-mouth recommendations. So how can you combat these unfortunate reviews, especially if they're not accurate in the first place?

1. Respond to negative reviews quickly, professionally and politely.

Every review site gives you the option of claiming your profile and leaving public feedback on a review. You should respond to every review that has criticism, even if they leave you five stars. Assure the customer that you're taking their advice to heart and using it to make positive changes in your business. For an extremely negative review that would be too complicated to go into on a public forum, invite the customer to contact you directly so you can resolve the situation.

By leaving a response, even if there's nothing much you can do to resolve the customer's issue, you give the impression that you're concerned about your customers and eager to provide good service.

Resist the urge to be sarcastic or humorous, as either approach may come across poorly in writing. Keep your responses short and upbeat. If you tend to get personally offended or emotional about criticism, enlist a trusted employee to monitor review sites and write responses.

2. Request that threatening or defamatory reviews be removed.

Depending on the review site, you may be able to get an especially heinous review taken down completely. For example, you can make a case that reviews threatening your personal safety or that of your employees, using profane language or including excessive swear words aren't appropriate and should be removed.

You'll usually have to claim your profile on that site in order to make this request. Also, such requests can take some time to be checked and removed; be polite and persistent in asking for removal of these types of reviews.

3. Ask customers who leave bad reviews to update or remove them.

If you take problem resolution for a customer offline, and they contact you, you should take every possible step to successfully address their concerns. Then, politely request that if you resolved the situation to their satisfaction, that they update their negative review.

4. Encourage positive reviews.

If you have 20 reviews online, and 18 are glowing and positive with only two complaining and negative, that leaves a good overall impression. Your best reaction to a negative review is to get two or three positive ones that will outshine that critique.

How do you get positive reviews? Most sites forbid you from giving customers a discount or freebie for leaving a review. While the odds are low that Yelp will find out you're giving a special coupon to each proven reviewer, you should take the ethical path and adhere to their requirements. You can ask for reviews without giving anything in exchange.

Some businesses make a page on their website or a flyer that they can pass out in their physical locations that list the review sites they're participating in and asking for feedback.

You can also ask customers who tell you that you're great, write you a nice letter or call you with their thanks that you'd really appreciate if they shared their good experience on a specific review site.

Note that some review sites, especially Yelp, tend to bury or ignore positive reviews that are left by new users or that are too enthusiastic. There's very little you can do about these reviews being left off your review page, except for continuing to encourage more positive reviews and hoping that some will stick.

5. Use the negative feedback to make improvements to your business operations.

In some ways, getting online reviews that are negative is much better than getting bad word-of-mouth or publicity. You have the ability to address the issue right next to the poor review; if someone tells a friend at a party about a bad experience with your business, you have no way to address it. So use the criticism you get to learn where you can make changes to your business that will impact more than just one complaining customer.

Many small business owners share online reviews, both positive and negative, with employees. You can read them out loud at employee meetings or post them on a bulletin board in the break room. That can help your employees understand the importance of treating each customer like they matter.

Online reviews can hurt your business, but by staying professional, responding right away and showing that you care about your customer, you can reverse much of the damage.

A penny for your thoughts!

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