How to Respond to Negative Reviews: The 10 Best Practices (and Response Examples!)
Even though every business gets them, negative online reviews still cut deep. Whether justified or not, you’ll probably want to send a response defending your business immediately. After all, 97% of people say that online reviews—both positive and negative—impact their decision about whether or not they want to give their business to a given company.
Though you can’t control the words people use to define and label your business, you can control your response. Responding to negative feedback is an important step in offering excellent customer service. The way you respond to less-than-ideal feedback has a significant impact on how the review impacts your profits and overall reputation.
How Bad Business Reviews Impact Your Company
You’ve poured your heart and soul into your business, so it’s no surprise that you iceland phone number list feel angry and defensive about negative feedback—especially if it’s unfair. A single bad review has the power to adversely impact your business by:
Resulting in a loss of revenue
Harming your company’s reputation
Dissuading future customers from trying what you have to offer
Despite the potential for these negative impacts, the likelihood of this occurring is more dependent on the ratio of positive reviews to customer complaints and the way in which you respond to negative reviews.
Why Bother Responding to Negative Reviews?
As long as you don’t have so much negative feedback that your average customer rating on your Google Business Profile is sitting below five stars, negative reviews can be used to your advantage. Some of the ways in which negative reviews can benefit your business include:
Eliciting sympathy. Sometimes negative customer feedback is so blatantly unjustified and absurd that, within a sea of positive reviews, is interpreted by customers as lacking credibility. A one-star review that isn't backed up with details isn't credible. Seeing such an unfair review evokes sympathy for your business and can even result in customers posting positive reviews that challenge the bad review.
Increasing SEO. Negative feedback can boost your local SEO and increase your company’s visibility and search rankings by including keywords.
Building customer trust. Customers see companies without any negative feedback as unrealistic and untrustworthy, leading positive reviews to come across as fake reviews. While a lot of negative reviews may compromise customer trust, a handful will indicate to the potential customer that the positive reviews are genuine too.
When customers see your response to a negative review, their sympathy and trust increases even more. That being said, the manner in which you respond to negative feedback determines the impact it has on your business.
How to Respond to Negative Reviews the Right Way
Responding to negative feedback incorrectly can cause a negative review to do more damage than it would have in the first place. By adhering to these ten best practices, you can make negative feedback work for you every time.
1) Stay Calm and Collected
We get it. When someone has something unflattering to say about your business, the first thing you want to do is defend yourself. Maybe the customer service was lacking one day because several of your staff members were out sick, causing your remaining employees to be stretched a little thin. Or maybe there was a software error that resulted in the double-booking of clients who were in need of your services.