5 Tips For Responding To Negative Customer Reviews Online

It’s holiday time and I thought I’d spread a little cheer by talking about negative reviews and how fun they are for local businesses.

As Yelp says, “negative reviews can feel like a punch in the gut”. Even better, according to a recent study by Cone Communications, four out of five consumers have changed their minds about a recommended purchase based solely on negative information they found online.

But there’s a lot of lemonade to be made from those review lemons. After all, negative reviews can increase sales. Negative reviews can help potential customers feel like they have “done their homework” which moves them further towards making a purchase decision. Negative reviews can also add credibility to your positive reviews. And perhaps most important, negative reviews give businesses a chance to respond and show how awesome they really are.

So when your business gets slammed on a local review site, be it a legit complaint or a crackpot customer, you can’t afford to ignore the negativity. So let’s look at how to turn these major bummers into teachable moments.

1. Have A Game Plan

As Mike Blumenthal recommends in Responding To Negative Reviews – Your Prospects Are The Real Audience: “Never respond to reviews unless you can own the issue, describe how future customers will not have the issue, and offer to fix the issue”. He also recommends that when you do respond, you “write with your prospects in mind”.

2. Understand The Tools At Your Disposal

Get to know the sites that all merchants to respond and learn how to use their tools. Miriam Ellis has a great post Edit, Remove and Respond To Reviews – Tools for Conflict Resolution that outlines what kinds of merchant responses are allowed on different local reviews sites. I have adapted her list to create the one below.