{"id":4739,"date":"2019-09-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/how-to-handle-negative-reviews\/"},"modified":"2022-02-07T11:48:08","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T15:48:08","slug":"how-to-handle-negative-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/20\/how-to-handle-negative-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Handle Negative Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
With all the rating services on sites like Amazon and Yelp, it’s not a question of whether your business will receive a negative review, only when. Every business or service must know how to handle these negative reviews. Here are some hints:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The best defense is a great offense<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You don’t have to address negative reviews if you never have them in the first place. Proactively identify possible negative experiences and encourage customers to respond directly to you to resolve their issues. Here are some suggestions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n FIRST fix the problem<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When you get a negative review, try to identify the customer and contact them directly. Then work with them to solve their problem. If a solution is not possible, be willing to cancel their service or refund their money. A disgruntled customer that hasn’t been hurt financially quickly becomes a toothless monster. Once this is done, try to have the customer remove their review if they are satisfied. OR even better, try to get them to rave about how you solved their problem!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Know your dissatisfied reviewer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Conduct research on the customer. Are they habitual complainers or bullies? The current public feedback forums have created many of these types. On the other hand, people easily get frustrated with poor service and are simply at their wit\u2019s end. It’s important to know the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems are opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside every negative review is an opportunity to be better at what you do. Even with the review bullies, there is an element of truth to most reviews. Try to get past the emotional impact of the negative review and think of it as a gift to make your service better than everyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing the response: FREE advertising<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve fixed the problem. You\u2019ve researched the customer. You\u2019ve looked for opportunities to be better at what you do. Now you are ready to publicly respond to the negative review. But \u2014 and this is important \u2014 you are not responding to the complainer. You are responding to future readers of the complaint! The formula of a great response is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Time is of the essence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Try to complete your contact and response within 24 hours. This speed will impress all future readers. A lot must be done to reach this goal, but if you assign someone to monitor review services for you, and they are empowered to solve problems, you can accomplish this goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today\u2019s review systems give entirely too much power to a few complainers. Your goal should be to use these systems to your advantage to build your brand and find new buyers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With all the rating services on sites like Amazon and Yelp, it’s not a question of whether your business will receive a negative review, only when. Every business or service must know how to handle these negative reviews. Here are some hints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"post_statement":"","post_description":"","post_cta":"","post_button":"Read More","post_button_url":"","compliance_id":"","post_disclaimer":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[35],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5220,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions\/5220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}