Photo by Benis Arapovic
While bad reviews are disconcerting, there is a silver lining. How bad reviews can be positive for your business.
Published reports indicate 90 percent of prospective customers will read your online reviews before they decide to buy from you.
It’s nearly impossible to avoid negative reviews. No company is perfect but some customers are unhappy no matter what you do.
While bad reviews are disconcerting, there is a silver lining. Why? Ironically, bad reviews can lead to positive results for your business success.
Ironically, bad reviews can lead to positive results for your business success.
Other prospective customers will be pragmatic and will spot whether a bad review is authentic.
Otherwise, negative reviews might be authentic and will warn others what could possibly be wrong with a product or service. You can learn from such reviews.
So you must respond.
Study carefully the concerns, and if necessary investigate them and empathize with the customer.
Best Practices to Get Positive Customer Reviews on Amazon
By showing care and due diligence you’re more likely to continue the business relationship whenever feasible, and will demonstrate to others how well you operate your business for their customer satisfaction.
Capitalize on them by apologizing, taking conversations offline, and implementing feedback to improve operations, which can turn critics into loyal customers and improve ratings.
Checklist for responding
1. Respond quickly. Fast responses illustrate you as a thoughtful, professional company.
3. Recognize the customer’s feelings in your response. Be sure to apologize, or express your regret they’re unhappy, even if they’re mistaken or unfair in their criticism.
4. ASAP, move the complaint offline. Give your phone number and/or email address in an effort to resolve the issue.
5. Show empathy and respond to the customer’s entire complaint point-by-point. Never use a robotic or templated response.
Strategies to capitalize on complaints
1. Address the issue, and update your response right away to demonstrate your thoughtfulness.
2. Take advantage of negative comments as insights. In this way, you’ll be able to spot recurring problems and make improvements with your employees, products or services.
3. Be aware potential customers will notice how you handle problems. When you handle negative reviews well, they will serve as trust-building events.
4. Boost your overall ratings by encouraging satisfied customers to post their reviews online.
When you shouldn’t respond
Often there are fake, non-customer reviews. There are also trolling, abusive comments. You might want to consider reporting the nonsense to the platform, and stop engaging the people.
Good luck! A negative review can become an opportunity for growth.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are more solutions:
Are You Attacked by Bad or Bogus Reviews? 5 Tips to Respond – Certainly, you only want positive customer reviews. Understanding customer behavior is important. Internet-savvy shoppers read reviews to make buying decisions. Reviews can make or break you.
14 Tips to Profit from Online Customer Reviews – For competitiveness and profits, businesses can’t afford to ignore the potential of online reviews. They’re a factor in revolutionizing commerce.
Improve Your Customer Service the Right Way with Chatbots – By scanning for keywords from a customer’s message — then replying with keywords from a database when they’re off-target — can be annoying to the recipient. Here’s how your chatbot system will enhance your customer service.
Sales Tips to Boost Your Brand Via Recommendations – Selling is much easier when customers recommend your business to their family, friends or business acquaintances. To get recommendations, here are five tips.
“The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”
-Norman Vincent Peale
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