How to Deal With Negative Reviews That Are Ruining Your Business
Negative reviews affect your business in many ways besides hurting revenue and profitability. Poor online reputation discourages an average customer from contacting local businesses. Most business owners know how detrimental negative reviews can be, but not many know how to deal with them. If you are one of those businesspersons hit by negative feedback, find out how you can deal with it effectively.
1. Reach Out to Unhappy Customers
Research and list all negative reviews your business have on the internet. Consolidate them in a document or a spreadsheet and scrutinize each one. The next step is differentiating fake and genuine reviews. You can identify real either by looking at the names of reviewers or the way they described their experience.
Now make a separate list of fake and genuine reviews. Go through each review and understand why they are unhappy. Check if you can identify reviewers using your customer database.
Start responding to those negative reviews very politely. Acknowledge genuine customer reviews and apologize to them. Inform them gently of the reason behind the bad experience and offer them ways to correct it. Explain how you prioritize the customer experience. Remember, prospects will see and read your response, not just those who left reviews.
Reach out to unhappy customers via an email or phone call if you manage to find them in your database. Explain the scenarios that led to their bad experience and assure them that it will not repeat.
Once you believe your explanation satisfied an unhappy customer, request them to update their review and explain how their online review affects your business.
2. Get More Positive Reviews
Do you know what a swarm of positive reviews can do to your business? They can drastically increase your business’s overall rating and bury negative feedback. Most small businesses follow this strategy to nullify the effects of negative reviews. This strategy yields excellent results. On the downside, it can be very challenging and time-consuming.
Here are a few tips from FeedbackClarity that will help your business drive positive customer reviews.
- Use coupons and discounts to encourage customers to leave positive feedback.
- Run social media contests and campaigns.
- Reach out to happy customers directly and request their reviews.
- Make reviews an integral part of your marketing processes.
3. Flag and Report Fake Reviews
Every customer reviews platform on the internet, such as Google My Business, Yelp, YellowPages.com, etc., offers a way to flag and dispute fake reviews. If you believe the negative reviews about your business are fake or a result of a smear campaign from competitors, you can report them directly to review websites.
However, you are less likely to get those reviews deleted successfully. The majority of the business review platforms don’t have robust processes set up to expedite business owner reports.
4. Fix Business Processes That Are Resulting In Poor Customer Feedback
Perhaps, this is the crucial thing you need to focus on if you don’t want your customers to leave negative feedback. Understand what is making your customers unhappy. It could be because of the quality of service, service delay, longer wait times, poor customer support, etc.
Find ways to improve the business process, and the customer experience will automatically improve.
If you find it challenging to fix business problems, you can probably hire a business consultant to solve pressing issues.
5. Hire an Online Reputation Management Agency
Most business owners are already pretty busy with their day-to-day tasks. It can be challenging to focus on online reputation due to the lack of time or skills. If many negative reviews hit your business, we recommend that you work with an online reputation management solution like FeedbackClarity.
FeedbackClarity, a Chicago-based ORM solution, improves a business’s online reputation by removing negative feedback and driving new positive reviews.
We can remove negative reviews from:
- Google My Business
- Facebook Page Reviews
- Amazon Store Reviews
- DealerRater
- TrustPilot
- Vitals and many other review platforms
Who can benefit from FeedbackClarity services:
- Doctors and dentists
- Lawyers and attorneys
- Auto dealerships
- Hotel and restaurant owners
- Other small business owners
Do you want to know how FeedbackClarity helps your business? Get in touch with us.