How to handle bad reviews and negative customer feedback

Introduction

Online reviews matter. We all realize it, whether we understand exactly how and to what extent they matter, a minimum of in terms of organic visibility across search engines. Google said so itself: positive reviews and customer-business interactions improve organic visibility. But, more importantly, customer reviews impact real business outcomes and also the decisions potential customers make to patronize or not patronize certain outfits.

Just like their influence within the planet (offline), reviews not only give people a stronger idea of the effectiveness and quality of a selected product, service, or business – they reinforce a better-than-average customer experience, something all consumers seek. That’s why all brands must be accepting and fascinating with customer reviews – good or bad, always. Responding to the positive ones isn’t usually all that tough.

It’s the feedback that’s usually the foremost difficult to handle, and with good reason. It’s hard to require harsh criticism. It’s even harder to house an angry customer which will sometimes, in these circumstances, become stubborn and overwhelming.

As such, here are the simplest 16 tips for handling negative reviews that each one of businesses will undoubtedly receive.

Tips for Handling Bad Reviews

Respond Fast

When your company gets a negative review, it’s imperative to reply fast to prevent the damage. you do not want that reviewer to depart more negative reviews on other sites or post a few negative experiences on social media. When posting a negative review online, people want to understand that their opinion was heard. By responding quickly, it shows you care and it gives people the satisfaction of knowing that they were heard. Once a dialogue with the customer is started, they’re much less likely to continue the negative postings and reviews. 

Use Them As A Learning Experience

It takes eight excellent experiences to motivate customers to get a positive review, but just one subpar experience can compel them to get a negative review. However, once you treat the negative reviews as learning experiences rather than roadblocks, they’ll often take your business to new heights. Bad reviews are a chance for introspection. Raise a red flag with every single negative review you encounter and delve deep into what caused the disconnect and dissatisfaction. Work on taking corrective actions while letting the reviewers know that you simply are actively functioning on the resolution of their issues. Taking such a proactive approach wouldn’t only propel your team to realize higher levels of customer satisfaction, but would also end in reviewers becoming lifelong engaged customers.  

Show You’re Listening

There’s always something to be learned from being attentive to customer feedback—and you regularly learn plenty more from feedback than positive. It may be that you just made a blunder or that you simply didn’t communicate expectations clearly enough. regardless of the reason for the difficulty, truly hear the client, reflect on their feedback, validate their concerns and express empathy and gratitude for his or her time and knowledge. Make the changes necessary to keep people happy.  

Hug The Haters

When someone leaves you a review that’s but stellar, you’ll be able to ignore them, put them on blast otherwise you can do what you must do, which is hug the haters. What are you able to learn from a negative review? The hater was a customer? Sure it’s bad, but they took time to depart you a review and that they must care. If the hater specifically mentioned parts of your process that require attention, they paid attention. In a way, the haters are internal control and that they are on your side! So a way to best handle this? Have an internet reputation management service. answer all reviews. Thank the haters, ID the matter within the response, end by thanking them again and offering to continue the conversation offline. Positive reviews are good to possess, but when it involves haters, give them a hug! 

Attract Attention To Them

Use your negative review to launch a replacement product or service. Obviously, when the negative review first appears online or involves your attention, you must address the reviewer and check out to repair matters.In the future, employing a negative review as a part of a broader strategy to launch a replacement business is absolutely successful. employing a negative review to launch something new has the effect of subconsciously creating trust in your client or user. Launching something to handle a complaint shows that your business solves problems and takes action, not just giving an apology and showing remediation efforts. Within the long term, you may be gaining way more business using this approach of building trust. If you wanted to profit off the approach even more, you may have the first complainant endorse the new product or service. 

Prove The Customer Wrong

To turn a negative review around, prove that customer wrong. Exceed their expectations by going above and beyond to help them and make them happy. This offers you the chance to not just show them, but other customers still how your business handles customer support. you’ll show them that you simply take your service to the subsequent level and wish to tend to their needs.  

Offer Something Tangible Or Specific

Every negative review is a chance to indicate to customers that you simply care about their needs. We’ve often seen responses to online reviews where businesses ask customers to bend on them to form up for the bad experience. However, it’s more sincere and meaningful if you offer something unhappy customers will take pleasure in, like a refund or a present card. reply to feedback and offer an apology where needed, but also back it up with a helpful “peace offering.” 

Track Them Qualitatively And Quantitatively

Reviews can tell management and teams lots about how they will improve. you ought to be keeping track of the negative reviews qualitatively with a spreadsheet that identifies key product or experience issues. This sort of tracking will provide you with a thought of how big the matter is and assign a priority to fixing the matter with the acceptable team members. Perhaps it is a new software bug that’s affecting 20% of your users, and it’s probably a giant deal to pass this onto the software team to have them fix it, but other issues may not be as pressing, rather just minor annoyances. Every issue should be assigned a priority level. Lastly, actually reading the reviews will offer you a qualitative perspective and allow you to know what problems really irritate customers. 

Conclusion

Maintaining your brand image online is vital for your business, and following the following pointers should facilitate your management of negative reviews confidently. Ensure you keep routine maintenance of your online profiles on review sites like TripAdvisor and the other popular review sites your target market is active on. this is often the simplest thanks to be top of your brand reputation online so you’ll attract more customers.