Handling Bad Reviews

Every company has complaints about their products, even your company. How you handle these complaints is the difference between a satisfied customer and an unhappy customer (with potential sales loss). With an increase of online exposure of your business, there is also a magnification of the possibility of one consumer affecting the perceptions of a lot more people. You need to be fast and effective in your reactions to any bad reviews which can flood social networks.

How Bad Reviews Work

Before computers, complaints were handled one on one by a company customer service representative. The customer complained, the situation was handled and the customer was either satisfied or dissatisfied. If he or she was unhappy, then the damage of your store’s reputation was confined to close friends and family members. You might lose some sales but nothing usually too significant. However, with the computer age, an unhappy customer can ruin your reputation with a mouse click. Bad reviews can spread through blogs, social networks, and message boards going global very quickly at the push of the enter button.

Responding to Backlash

You must keep in mind that complaints and negative online reviews can damage your company’s reputation. Customers read these reviews and place a lot of emphasis on them. Failing to respond to even one unhappy customer can cost you. When communicating with your customer, speak to them individually as a single internet audience, not as a group. Be casual but informative. If you are in the right, make your point simply and professionally. If you’re in the wrong, you need to acknowledge that you’re in the wrong and be willing to take the  steps to eliminate problems in the future. No excuses, no buts, just an honest apology. After the apology comes the promise to fix the problem and not allow it to occur again.

Handling Fraudulent Reviews

Sometimes a disgruntled employee or even your competition will post fraudulent reviews. This hurts your business because your customers read it and think that it’s a true posting. Online reviews and complaints can influence your customers buying decisions. Your customers do not have the inclination to investigate and find out which reviews are real and which ones are planted by someone falsely. Lying complaints and defamatory reviews, for instance about meat quality, can bring a company to the brink of ruin. The false review can lead to loss in sales, clients, customers, and cause an increase in refund requests. It can also start a cycle of negativity of even more bad reviews.

If this happens to you, there are professional reputation management firms, such as Reputation Changer, that use the proactive suppression method. They bury unwanted postings under a deluge of positive comments and the bad reviews become a non-issue. It has to be done this way because everything online becomes basically a permanent record.

The answer to keeping your company’s reputation tarnish free is to weigh the effectiveness of your company’s interaction with your customers, their complaints, and issues. By being proactive, your customers, both current and future will learn that your company is one that listens and they’ll come back again and again happy to do business with you.

Image courtesy of MorgueFile.