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Responding to Negative Reviews

Posted by Jenn Sargeant

Responding to Negative ReviewsIt’s very common for business owners to notice a negative review and not know how to respond or handle it. In fact, many business owners opt out of displaying or asking for reviews because they don’t know how to respond to negative reviews. We are here to tell you to not fear the negative review!

Negative reviews happen and sometimes it has nothing to do with the service the customer received. Some people are just looking for a way to channel their attitude and leaving a bad review may be their outlet. It is true that potential customers form an impression of a business based off of reviews before even visiting the business. With that being said, you wouldn’t want to leave a bad review just floating around cyber space. Respond to it! That’s right, respond to the bad review.

Now, don’t respond to the bad review with a puff in your chest! Here are a few tips for responding to negative reviews:

  1. It’s not a personal attack – Don’t think the person writing the review is personally attacking you. As mentioned before, this person could have just received a horrible phone call and visited your business and unleashed their feelings by leaving a review. Either way, don’t take the bad review personally.
  2. Communicate with the reviewer – The situation could be a giant miscommunication between the customer and the employee. Sometimes people will resort to leaving a bad review instead of contacting the business about the issue. Professionally contacting the customer to resolve the issue could even result in them removing and adding a positive review.
  3. Respond to the review – If you are unable to reach out to the person who left the review then respond to the review.  Responding to negative reviews show others that the business truly cares about their reputation and wants to provide the best service. Make it clear in the review you’ve made attempts to resolve the issue and ask that they contact you.

Removing reviews isn’t a best practice for Upright Communications. Most listings won’t allow you to remove reviews but you can flag them if you know the review is fake. The directory will look into the review and make a claim to remove the review. If you need assistance on responding to reviews then reach out to your friendly SEO team, Upright Communications!