Bad reviews are bad for business. Well, they are called “bad reviews” for a reason. In marketing, reviews carry as much weight as word of mouth because they express the view a person has of your business based on their experience or interaction with your business.
With the growth of online communities/ social media, looking up reviews has become a norm for many people when trying out a new business. They want to know what people are saying, whether it is a scam or legit, if the experience is great, and how secure the platform is.
In the face of customer reviews, it doesn’t matter what your website says about you or how beautiful your designs are. It only matters what a customer has said. And that will determine if they go on with your business or not.
You cannot close your eyes and magically wish that all bad reviews about your business vanish. There is always that one person whose mission is to give you a bad name. But you can manage and minimize bad reviews about your business. And here are nine ways you can do that.
1. Respond to comments and messages as soon as possible -when people read bad reviews, they also want to see what you are saying about this negative review.
2. Have a good and proactive customer support system -responding promptly highly depends on this. Actually, the overall customer experience depends on this.
3. Say sorry -apologize for any inconvenience after dispute resolution.
4. Compensate the customer promptly when applicable or give incentives after dispute resolution.
5. Do not hesitate to apologize publicly when necessary -it is better to say sorry to everyone and offer a reasonable explanation than move on with business as usual as if nothing happened. Even if nobody leaves a review about it, it is irresponsible behaviour.
6. Intentionally plan every customer’s journey through your business. For high-paying customers, you should consider having account managers for a personalized experience.
7. Encourage customers to delete their comments or negative reviews once the issue has been resolved.
8. Invest in good PR and branding -public perception of you is important, so invest in building a good image for your business.
9. Have good products/services -no amount of public apology, incentives, and good PR will compensate for terrible products/services. Bad reviews will continue to flow like a stream, and your business will drown in it one day.
Finally...
An aspect of reviews you would learn to accept is that while you might have to beg people to leave a positive review for you, people will voluntarily and eagerly leave a bad review in the case of a bad service. So the thing to do here is, encourage people to leave positive reviews about your business. One customer somewhere is just one good review away from becoming a loyal customer.
