Bad Reviews – How to Deal with Them Quickly and Effectively

Everyone has an opinion, and regrettably as a small business owner some of these opinions could cause your business a good deal of trouble. Managing your online reputation has become a must-do item on your daily checklist. Neglect to do so, and you might find people deserting you in droves. Bad reviews are a reality of online life. They are so easy to post, and could sway large segments of the audience on your side or not. The secret is having much more of the positive to outweigh the inescapable negative.

What to do with negative reviews

Here are three steps to proactively deal with the occasional negative review.

1. Customer service needs to be a high priority – Many times the reason why companies are in the position of working with a particularly nasty online review is that they neglected to attend to business when the problem first came up. Oftentimes the customer attempted to connect, but had no response, and felt as though they had no choice but to air their frustrations online at a review site. Much of this can be avoided by taking a proactive stance with respect to monitoring your onsite and social media channels, so you'll know when a problem appears.
2. Deal professionally with people – Whatever you do, don't inflame the situation by resorting to vitriolic he said, she said types of encounters online. It will NEVER work in your favor, even if you're right. Remain professional, generous, and don't forget you are aiming to keep a customer, or at least not lose more of them! The truly problem customers are few, and not worth the possible damage they can do should you get into it with them!
3. Encourage good reviews – One of the better ways for you to actively make a difference is by supporting and even rewarding positive reviews of your services or products. Get an adequate amount of these consistently, and the occasional negative review will not stand a chance of remaining high in the search results. To the contrary, they'll more than likely bring you more customers!

Handling negative reviews isn't brain surgery, but it does need to have diligence and professionalism. Today with the speed of communication online, you truly haven't any other options!