Nothing hurts worse than getting your first negative review on Google Places or Yelp. You panic and think about how your business is going to plummet. You exclaim: “That review is not true at all!”.
While not the end of the world, negative reviews need to be managed because you want to make sure your company and the products and services you deliver are accurately represented online. No one is going to do this for you so you’ll need to have a plan.
Creating a Review Process
One way to manage negative reviews is to make sure that your company already has a process to request positive reviews from happy customers. Google Places and Yelp are generally the most visible properties online where potential customers can read about your products and services.
The first thing to do is create a page on your website called “Reviews” that describes your review process and the benefits a positive review has for happy customers. The page should contain links to your Google Places and Yelp profiles so it’s easy for people to get to your business profile on those sites to leave a review. Make the address of the “Reviews” page something easy like www.yoursitename.com/reviews.
Asking for Reviews
Most satisfied customers are not going to leave reviews while unsatisfied or disgruntled customers will go out of their way to create a negative review of your business. You can help collect positive reviews by asking your happy customers, if the could go to www.yoursitename.com/reviews and click on one of the links to leave a review.
Be specific in requesting either a Google Places or Yelp review so you don’t leave your customer wondering which one they should do. Some will self-select, if they are already an active reviewer on that site.
Dealing With Negative Reviews
Inevitably, you will receive some negative review at some point. If you’ve created a process to collect positive reviews, then this could look like an isolated incident. One thing you should try to do is reach out to the customer who left the negative review and understand the root cause of their issue. Never engage a negative reviewer publicly on the review site as this can easily turn into a public finger pointing exercise where no benefits, and you end up looking really bad.
Many negative reviews are posted in frustration or because of a misunderstanding, and once the offending issue is identified and a plan is put in place to “make good” on the issue, you can ask the customer who left the negative review to make an update. If the customer refuses, then you will most likely have to live with the negative feedback. This is why encouraging positive reviews regularly is so important.
Create a review process for your happy customers and make it easy for them to access your online review profiles through your website, and you will be in a good position should negative reviews happen to appear.
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What are you doing to manage negative reviews that appear online?
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