Should You Respond To Negative Reviews? How?

Customer reviews are vital for your marketing campaign. In fact, research showed that reviews could impact your search ranking. The majority of consumers trust an online review the same way they trust a personal referral. Unfortunately, not all reviews are positive. Whether you like it or not, your company will receive some negative reviews. Are negative reviews a bad thing? For some, they are. For others, however, they use these them to work in their favor. In fact, they use them as a business opportunity. But how?

Approach them with a positive attitude

If you worked in a customer service, then you’d know how difficult it is to handle an irate customer. Negative reviews could make you upset. As a human being, the first thing that you might want to do is to defend your company. But don’t. Instead, handle those reviews with a positive attitude. Make sure that the reviewers know you heard them and let them feel like they’re the victim. You may also think that ignoring the review would do good to your company. But it doesn’t. Your consumers would want you to respond so they’d know you truly care about your customers.

Tell them how you’ll fix the issue

Offering an apology won’t do any good because the reviewers want a solution to the problem. After apologizing, tell your customers that you’re looking into the problem and finding out how to fix it. Be empathetic when responding and follow it up with an immediate fix. Doing so will help redeem yourself and show to the customers that they’re your priority.

Address the reviews offline

Although it’s always a good idea to respond immediately online or on the same platform, there are issues that you can’t fix online. It’s especially true if the issues involved a personal information that you must only discuss it in person or over the phone. Taking it offline will show to your customers that you’re going the extra mile just to resolve your client’s issues. But you must only do so in severe cases.

Speak to them in an understandable language

When you respond to your customers, never talk in industry jargon. Instead, use plain language to sound more genuine. In this way, your customers will see you as a human being and not as a business.

Ask for an update

After resolving the issue, never hesitate to ask for an update. Some customers would update their negative review and turn it into a positive one after the company asked for an updated review. So, try asking for one as you’d get better, more positive review.