How to Turn Around a Bad Online Review

Although the internet provides you with many business opportunities, it’s very hard to manage your brand online, especially if you get a bad review.

Read on and find out what you can do to turn things around when your business gets a bad review and you don’t know what to do.

Why Reviews Are Important

When you’re a customer, you might leave reviews due to different reasons. You could, for example, support your favorite brand by reviewing them, so other people know they provide high-quality services.

Furthermore, when you want to know if you’re hiring the right experts, reading other customers’ reviews might be very important. Therefore, people’s opinions are vital when you want others to trust a business.

In many cases, people trust reviews as much as they would trust the opinion of someone they know. If that’s what you think, understanding how to turn around a bad online review is even more important because it could make a huge difference for your business, especially if you want to transform the idea into a profitable reality.

Step One: Do Nothing

It might sound odd, but the first thing to do when your company gets a bad online review is to do nothing.

When someone leaves a bad review, other customers can read it. Moreover, any visitor who stumbles upon your site could find out as well. Therefore, if you panic and feel angry, it’s completely normal.

However, you shouldn’t act just because you feel angry or scared about the future. Instead, let your emotions cool off before deciding what to do.

Dealing with a bad review can be very complicated, which it’s crucial you feel relaxed when you do it. Being angry can only make things worse. Thus, wait a few hours before responding, or even take a few days if you need it.

Step Two: Be Honest

Once you’ve calmed down after reading the negative review, it’s time for you to take some time and think about what the customer said.

On some occasions, customers are so angry that they don’t know how to communicate their opinion properly. Nonetheless, what they’re saying might still be valid.

Suppose that they’re complaining because your team delivered the product late. If they’re insulting you, it might be the worst way to handle the situation, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

In other words, if you notice that your team failed at something, you should try to ensure they improve. Otherwise, you can’t make sure your company grows.

Accepting your mistakes is a crucial part of running a successful business and guaranteeing that your next customers are satisfied with your work. Thus, consider that when you’re evaluating what clients say about your company.

What You Should Do if the Review Is a Lie

Sometimes, you might read a bad review and notice that the person who wrote it is lying. Unfortunately, not everyone has the best intentions in mind when they review a business or brand.

Therefore, you should be prepared for that as well. If someone leaves an unjust negative review, remember that they’re hiding behind anonymity to do it, and they may want to ruin your brand, reputation, or manipulate you so you give them money.

Depending on the case, you could do different things. Responding to them might be a way to go about it. You could ask them to provide evidence that supports what they’re saying, and once they don’t, then you can have the upper hand on the situation.

However, in some cases, things are so out of hand that you may have to consider taking legal actions. If you can prove that your brand is getting an unfair review and that the person behind it might be trying to get money from you or manipulate you, getting legal help may be a good way to handle the situation.

Step Three: Respond to Customers

If you want to turn your ideas into action, handling bad reviews is crucial. Once you’ve learned to manage your emotions when you read negative comments, and what to do after that, you should consider understanding how to respond to customers.

There are different ways to respond when you want to turn around a bad online review. It all depends on your specific circumstances and what you wish to achieve.

Even so, keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to turn around people’s opinions. To make your business grow, you need to have a good reputation, and you can’t get that with bad reviews, so you should learn how to respond to your customers.

Remember that other customers might not understand why someone’s leaving a bad review. On the contrary, if they’ve had positive experiences with your business, they may feel shocked by reading that negative comment. Thus, it’s your responsibility to turn things around and ensure that they want to keep working with you.

Public Responses

You could show your other customers that you value their opinion by publicly addressing a negative review. Nonetheless, you should be very careful when you’re doing that.

The most important thing of publicly responding to a review is to keep the customer-is-always-right attitude. If you don’t do that, people might think you’re not valuing what they have to say.

Public responses to a bad review could be very beneficial for your business. Other clients could see how much you value their satisfaction, which is essential for any business. Consequently, the best way to succeed with this strategy is to put the person’s needs first and make them feel heard, understood, and respected.

Private Responses

There are other alternatives besides publicly responding to a negative review. You could, for example, address the issue privately.

If you choose that approach, send a message to the customer and manage the issue separately. You could, for example, ask them to schedule a phone call.

Once you reach out to your customer, you have to wait for their response. If they agree to talk to you, you should ask them to explain what happened, which could help you improve in the future.

Finally, you could ask them to remove the review if they’re content with the solution you came up with to address the problem. They could even turn it into a positive one if they want to!

You Could Not Respond at All

Sometimes, not responding is the best way to handle a negative review, especially if you’re dealing with someone who’s just trying to ruin your reputation without any real evidence.

In that case, you could simply ignore them, and try to remove the review by your own means. Unfortunately, there are millions of people on the internet. Many trolls just enjoy doing things that could hurt your business, such as leaving random negative comments. Therefore, you should try to handle things without addressing them!

Step Four: Try to Get the Review Removed

The good thing about online reviews is that you could get them removed sometimes. It depends on the platform, so you have to find out if it can work for you.

Google, for example, removes reviews that don’t meet certain criteria. If the person writes inappropriate content, or if they go off-topic, you could get them removed.

At the same time, Yelp and Facebook allow you to do that as well. When you see a review that doesn’t follow the community standards, you can flag it, so the staff evaluates it and removes it if they decide you’re right.

The basics of running an online business also have to do with understanding that everyone can write whatever they want. Consequently, that gives you an advantage because if they leave an unjust review, you could ask for revision and get it removed. It doesn’t have to harm your reputation!

How to Prevent Getting Bad Online Reviews

The best way to manage bad online reviews is to ensure that you get as few as possible. To do that, you have to make sure that your customers have an amazing experience each time they hire your business.

Therefore, at the end of your interaction with a customer, you could ask them how they thought it was. Try to get them to explain what they believe you could improve.

Even so, some customers might leave negative reviews, so you must be prepared to address those as well when the time comes.

You could also use software to separate the good comments from the bad ones, which would allow you to solve issues before customers leave bad reviews. There are many options available, so do some research and discover what suits you best.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to turn around a bad review is essential for anyone who’s running an online business.

Good reviews are always enjoyable, but bad ones are a part of the process as well. Fortunately, managing them allows you to develop essential skills, such as the ability to handle unhappy customers.

Therefore, even though negative reviews might be unpleasant, you can turn them around and learn from them to make your business grow.