Every person and company makes mistakes, but companies are always held over the fire for every mistake they make. As a business owner, it can feel like a single negative review about your business or product is the end of the world, but that is never the case. The degree to which negative reviews damage your business depends solely on how you react, and what you do to directly solve the problem.
A single negative review is going to find it difficult to damage your business when it is set against hundreds of positive reviews. You need to set up plenty of ways for your customers to give you positive reviews when they have had a good experience with your company, and that includes putting links to review websites in all of your emails.
You should also invite your customers to share their positive experiences with your company on your social media web pages. As SEO devices, your social media pages get a lot of hits and they can help to dilute any negative comments you may get.
If a customer has a legitimate complaint with your product or company and has expressed that problem publicly, then own the problem publicly. Immediately acknowledge the customer’s complaint, and then publicly offer a way to get to a solution.
You should always keep the actual conversation between you and your customer private to protect their information, but you need to show the rest of your audience that you accept issues and offer solutions.
Even when dealing with the most irrate customer in your company’s history, you should always use professional language and offer real solutions. If a professional approach does not calm an angry customer, then offer to address the issue in a private conversation via the phone or email. If the customer insists on keeping the problem out in public, then your only course of action is to cut off the conversation and continue to reach out to the customer privately.
A mistake you do not learn from is a wasted opportunity. Each time you get a negative review of your business, it is safe to say that your business has done something wrong. You need to treat every negative review as constructive criticism and use it to improve your business. Does your product need improving, or is your customer service process lacking? Negative reviews are an excellent way for you to find out what you are doing wrong, and then take the steps to correct it.
Always follow-up with customers that give negative reviews or had problems with your company to make sure that the problem has been solved. The worst thing you can do is to take all of the necessary steps to solve a problem, but then fall short of an actual solution because you did not follow-up. Stay in touch with your customers until the issues are resolved and that will help to bring those customers back to your business.
There is no such thing as a customer comment that should be avoided or ignored. Negative reviews are just as valuable, if not more valuable, than positive reviews. Whenever you get a negative review, you should look at it as an opportunity for your business to improve and a chance to make a stronger connection with your customers.
