A bad online review can be intimidating because it can damage your business’s reputation. Before buying your products, users will look at the review to see if your offerings are worth buying. If they find people commenting bad things about your brand, they will leave you and go to your competitors.
Every business tries all the harder to keep its customers happy and satisfied, but some customers can be grumpy. As soon as they find a loophole, they will immediately leave a bad comment about your business. Well, no matter how effectively you are treating your customers, you can have a couple of customers who would post a bad comment about you online.
This is actually daunting because once you lose your reputation; you will never be able to hold the market. It becomes more challenging to take care of such reviews if you are a start-up because you may have already funded your business with quick loans in Ireland.
You may not be able to pay off the debt if your customers leave you for your competitors. You all know this is a problem, but many of you do not know the right way to handle it.
The right way to handle a bad review
The first thing you need to do to handle bad online reviews is to make you understand that it will not bring down the world. Such reviews happen; you are neither the first person nor the last one on the planet who has come up with such reviews. Here is what you can do to handle bad online reviews:
- Decide if you need to give a response
Sometimes reviews are not all bad. They just consist of minor complaints that you can easily ignore. If you decide to write to them, make sure that the response is short and crispy. You can thank them for their feedback. However, sometimes reviews are vicious.
When you read them, you find that they have been created to take out frustration on you. You find many words in block letters to emphasize their opinions and feelings. You even see the real names of the poster and the same language across all platforms.
Well, such reviews are to be dealt with immediately because they can pose a great risk to your online reputation. If you do not want to lose your new customers to your competitors, you should immediately write to them.
If you find that the entire review is fake and seems to be created to defame you or your brand, you should try to remove it. There are some platforms that allow for the option of removing derogatory reviews.
You should read the review policy of that platform to see if you have a chance to remove that review. However, if it does not allow you to remove it, you can reply publicly to debunk their falsehoods. If you do not find it worth commenting on, you can simply write thanks for your feedback.
It is to be noted that sometimes users do not post bad reviews to take out their frustrations on you, but they do it because they are genuinely disappointed in your product. You should not ignore the fact that your customer is disappointed because of your attitude. In this situation, you should admit your fault and try to figure out what you can do to mollify your customer’s pain.
- Make a strategy to response
When you have found that the reviews posted online need a response, the next step is to find out you should make a strategy. You cannot make an immediate response in the heat of the moment because that can backfire on you.
A rule of thumb says that you need to be calm at the time of handling the bad review. You should recall the situation when the customer approached you, how you closed the deal when they bought your product, what was their feedback during after-sale service and the like.
You need to get all the input to make sure that it all ends in a gentle way. It is important to have gathered all this information before crafting a reply. Do not forget to jot down all important points you think you will need to frame the response.
Make sure that you stay calm while responding to the review of the user, and you do it publicly. However, you can respond to them on their email ID if you think the issue is extremely serious and that you are largely responsible for this argument and a dispute.
Try to give your user a suggestion on how you can make it up to them. Since the mistake is on your part, you should not compromise with your offerings to restore the relationship with that customer. With your reply, the customer will come back to review, which may be less harsh this time. Seeing this, your new customers will understand the fact that you value them.
- Reply publicly or privately
This is the most difficult thing to decide whether you should reply publicly or privately. If the issue is minor, you can do it publicly. However, if you think that it is easier to reach out to the person directly on his phone or email, you should go ahead then.
If the issue is serious and you think that it can stretch further, you should try to reply privately, and when the issue is resolved, you should ask your user if they can post another review.
The bottom line
Although dealing with bad reviews can be daunting, it is not impossible to deal with. You should take some time to decide whether the review is actually threatening and if so, you should come up with the best strategy.
You should hire an expert at customer relationships who can help you. In case you do not have enough money, you can take out bad credit loans in Ireland. However, make sure that you can pay off these loans smoothly.