Receiving negative reviews about your business can be upsetting and frustrating, but ultimately, it’s an inevitable part of doing business. Regardless of how you run your business, customers can still have a bad experience and choose to leave a negative review. The most important thing is that you use this negative feedback as a chance to improve and grow your business.
Why is it important to respond to negative reviews?
Running a small business takes a lot of time and effort, and responding to negative reviews may seem like a lot fo work at first, but responding can go a long way to building your brand and customer loyalty.
Customers have always loved to share positive and negative experiences, but with the explosion of social media, the impact is much more significant than before, including that:
- Online postings, whether positive or negative, can reach an unlimited number of existing and potential customers.
- Online reviews of your business live on the internet forever.
You can use this greater reach to your advantage by taking the time to respond to negative reviews. Your responses can show your current and potential customers that you care about their experiences and are actively looking for ways to improve, as long as you respond appropriately.
How to respond to negative reviews
1. Stay positive – Don’t let anger be your default response
While it can be both surprising and disheartening to first learn about a customer’s bad experience, whatever you do, don’t send a negative response to the customer or make excuses. Not only are these not good customer-service business practices to begin with, but they’ll also live online forever and won’t build any goodwill.
Instead, the most important thing to remember is to stay calm, process the information, and find a way to turn the situation into a positive. By doing so, you move control of the situation from the customer back to you and your business, so that you can initiate a positive response that reflects well on your business. BY keeping the tone positive, you’ll create a space for the possibility of resolution.
2. Respond in a timely manner
This way, problems are being addressed as soon as possible. By responding to customer complaints quickly, you’ll make them feel heard and engaged, prevent negative word-of-mouth, and potentially save their loyalty to your business.
You can set up Google review alerts, and practice regularly monitoring your social media reviews and inboxes to ensure you’re responding withing 24 hours of seeing the review.
3. Connect with the customer
Plan a brief strategy to reach out to the person and address the problem proactively, remembering that how you say things is as important as what you say.
Start by replying to the post directly, acknowledging the customer’s feelings and experiences, and thanking them for their feedback. Let them know that you want to learn more about what happened and ways that you can resolve the issues, then invite the person to take the conversation offline by asking for them to call you or email you so that you can respond to them directly.
By doing this, you’re helping this customer with the problem, while also demonstrating to other people who read the posts that you’re responsible, caring, and proactive. This simple action alone will go a long way toward alleviating any potential damage that could have been done through a negative review or post.
4. Offer a resolution
Your response should include a possible resolution with the customer. You can offer the customer an option to positively turn the experience around, even if it’s a complementary service or product – this will be an investment in goodwill and customer retention. In most cases, a good solution is easy to find and the actions you’ve taken will already have gone a lasting effect soothing any anger, disappointment or other negativity.
5. Personalize your response
It’s a good idea to add some personalization in your response where you can. You don’t want all your responses to sound the same like you’re just copying and pasting the same default response. One way to do this is to include the reviewer’s name (if it’s available). You can also try to adjust your response depending on what their complaint is – such as a defective product or bad customer service.
6. Follow-Up
After you’ve taken action to resolve the situation, reach out again to ensure that your customer is satisfied with the outcome of your interaction. Express your appreciation for bringing the experience to your attention to highlight their role in making your business better.
Now, let’s put it all together with some examples of possible responses:
- Hi (name), we’re so sorry to hear about your experience. We would like to hear more about what went wrong, and how we can improve. Please email us at (business email).”
- “Hi (name), we’re sorry to hear our product did not meet your quality expectations. Can you please email us at (business email) so we can get to the bottom of this?”
- “Hi (name), we’re sorry to hear that we did not meet your expectations. Please email us at (business email) to talk further about what went wrong.”
- “Hi (name), we’re so sorry that our customer service fell short. We’d like to hear more about what happened. Can you please email us at (business email)?”
Use feedback to grow your business
It’s a good idea to have a system in place for managing customer feedback. For example, you could assign a specific team or employee to monitor and respond to customer reviews. You could also create a committee to review the feedback and find ways to address and implement changes in the business.
Every business benefits from feedback, whether from customers who’ve had negative (or great!) experiences or from experts who can help identify challenges and opportunities that can strengthen your business.
Pursuit can help
Whether you’re growing your business through bettering your ability to respond to customer reviews, looking to bring on a new member to the team, or need capital to start a new project, Pursuit is a resource for all small businesses. We help small business owners learn skills for their business success and gain access to funding to grow.
Pursuit is a leading small business lender that serves businesses across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Nevada, Illinois, and Washington. We offer more than 15 business loan options, a line of credit, resources, and business advisory services to keep your business on track.
Contact us today to learn more about ways we can help you, too.
