Responding to Negative Reviews
It's natural to be upset when someone leaves an unfavourable comment about your business, but even the best of businesses sometimes get negative reviews. Studies have shown people can even be suspicious about the credibility of reviews if a business only has very favourable ones.
The important thing is how you respond to negative comment. A great response to a negative review can leave people with a good impression of your service and carry more weight than the original comment. Think of a negative review as an opportunity to demonstrate that you listen to your customers and work hard to resolve problems. As a consumer yourself, you'll know sometimes you run into problems with a service or product, and how the company reacts to resolve the problem will determine how you feel about them. If a company responds swiftly and helpfully, you'll be left with a positive impression, even if your original experience didn't go smoothly.
Here are some tips on how to respond:
1. Don't Attack Your Customer
When someone says something negative it makes you want to defend yourself and tell everyone how wrong the reviewer is about you. It might feel good to let off steam, but it won't make you look good to future customers.
- Never respond emotionally, take a day to calm down before replying.
- Don't say bad things about the reviewer, irrespective of what they said about you.
- Don't blame the reviewer (even if you think it's their fault).
2. Be Polite
It's not just the reviewer that may read your reply but others too. So bite your tongue and be super nice. Make sure your tone is polite and thank the reviewer for taking the time to leave a comment.
3. Keep It Simple
Don't write a whole essay. You don't have to answer every point or add lots of background information - short and to the point is the way to go. Sometimes the best option is to just acknowledge they feel there is a problem and say you'll contact them privately to work it out. Don't hash things out in public comments.
4. Try and Resolve the Issue
If the reviewer raises issues that you can resolve, consider contacting them to do so - but be polite and don't express anger at the fact they left a review. Some reviewers find it difficult to raise issues face to face, so they might not have been confident about telling you the problem even if you could have easily resolved it.
5. Learn from Reviews
Although one review is just a single person's opinion, you should always consider if there is anything you can learn that could improve your business. For example, a customer unhappy with a pre-stay test visit may just have misunderstood what test stay was for, so you might decide to make it's clearer that both parties can say "no" after a test stay, to help prevent similar issues in future.
Example Responses
Here are some example responses to negative reviews:
"My dog came home filthy."
Response: I'm so sorry that Barney came home dirty. I love to take the dogs on long advertures in the local woods and he had a lot of fun romping around in some muddy puddles. We didn't have time to have a full clean up before you picked him up. I promise next time we'll leave the muddy walks for earlier in the week.
"Terrible customer service - cancelled at the last minute."
Response: I'd just like to reiterate how sorry I am about cancelling at such late notice after a family emergency. My daughter is doing much better now and I hope one of the other boarders I gave you contact information for was able to help.
"The boarding was ok but my dog's bed was damaged."
Response: I'd just like to apologise again about the damage to Lulu's bed. I always take the utmost care of dog's posessions, but sometimes dogs can be more destructive than normal as they are in a new environment. Thank you again for being so understanding about it when you picked her up. Next time I can provide a bed/bedding if you prefer so that you can leave her own safe at home.
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