HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE ONLINE REVIEWS

Tips, suggestions, and inspiration from GennGlobal

INTRODUCTION

One of the most frustrating situations a small business owner might face is receiving a negative online review—no less one that is completely irrelevant to your business.

So what can you do about these reviews? Some reviews can be taken down, but that shouldn’t be your first course of action.

Next, we will discuss several ways to deal with negative online reviews, including responses to the review and ways for requesting the review be taken down, if appropriate.

A TRICKY SITUATION

Review websites are often placed in a delicate situation where they must balance the desires of the reviewers, and those being reviewed.

On one hand, these sites want to protect the rights of their reviewers so that their site can function and grow.

However, on the other hand, reviewers also want to keep the businesses being reviewed happy by having a zero-tolerance policy on libelous and inaccurate information.

A TRICKY SITUATION

When it comes right down to it, review websites want to cater to both of these groups.

However, it is unwise to count on these kinds of sites to consistently bring down negative reviews because, simply put, removing reviews hurts the credibility of review websites.

Therefore, it is important to find alternative means of dealing with negative, unhelpful reviews before resorting to a take-down request.

PUBLIC RESPONSE

A public response, usually through comment functionality or another similar feedback system, is a great idea for making first contact with these online reviewers.

If your company or business has a customer service department, it is recommended to attempt to refer the reviewer to your customer service department.

Ideally, your trained customer service professionals can resolve the issue in a way that benefits both parties.

HAVE A PLAN!

In addition, in order to be prepared for future negative reviews and to make sure that you don’t have to scramble for an answer, try drafting sample responses to negative reviews that you can utilize promptly in these situations.

You will want to personalize those messages for each situation, but having a framework will make crafting responses much easier. Also, you can guarantee that you are using language that you have approved ahead of time as appropriate and polite for the situation.

TAKE-DOWN REQUEST

However, it is entirely possible that reaching out to the reviewer just won’t work. In these situations, or in situations where the review is obviously irrelevant to how your business or is libelous, you can request that a review be taken down.

When determining whether or not a review can be taken down, you need to know what to look for.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

Violations of terms of use policies can result in a review being taken down. If you know that a reviewer violated one of a review site’s terms, that is grounds for the removal of a review.

Based on the guidelines of Facebook, Google, and Yelp, some common policy violations include: Breaches of privacy, intellectual property law,

use of inappropriate language, irrelevant content, promotional content, or a clear conflict of interests between the reviewer and subject of the review.