Dealing with negative online reviews
In this day and age, the Internet, being the information superhighway, has become a medium of communication among users. Social networks have provided a kind of omnipresence for people, especially for us in the Philippines — the social networking capital of the world. Through the Internet, we have the ability to share whatever we want: Lectures, opinions, ideas, experiences, virtually everything.
Today, opinions over the Internet are presented in different ways. There are websites that ask people to share their experiences through words, and there are also some who ask for them through numerical rankings. Travel and tour websites, for example, ask people to review their experiences in resorts and whether they would recommend it to others. There you can see quite a number of people complaining when they experience delays, or saw that what the company was saying online was not true to some extent. These are what we call bad reviews.
With enough bad reviews, any business can be taken down. Words spread and people believe; and most people tend to believe the negative more than the positive. But when bad reviews are dealt with properly, sometimes they can bring you good. Here are some tips in dealing with negative reviews online:
Take negative reviews seriously. There are Internet trolls and there are, more often, genuine bad comments. Before you start deleting them, understand that these reviews are not people’s way to destroy you. It’s the representation of how they truly felt with your product/service. As a business, you have to acknowledge how your consumers react toward the organization and toward what you sell.
Always take negative reviews seriously as they help you point out where your company is lacking. If the complaint is always about poor customer service, you might want to provide your people more training, or investigate if there are problem employees. If it’s about delivery, you could change your service provider. If it is about the product design (like in the case of smartphones), you should take into consideration in creating your following product lines. Comments like “I can’t hold the phone properly using one hand,” “It heats up too quickly,” and “might as well run the phone with AA Batteries instead of the ultra-fast drain battery” will give ideas on what your consumers really want and need.
In the case of Internet trolls (those who are just out to elicit responses, or bully people over the Internet for their amusement), you can simply report them, hide their comment, or even ban them if the website permits you to. I would discourage you from replying to them as they are guaranteed to be prepared for even bigger comebacks. There are no repercussions in putting trolls under the rug. Just make sure that they are indeed trolls and not your actual customers.
Fix the problem offline. If a client posts a bad review as a comment on your post, give a short response, but take everything else after offline. Do not post your side of the story as a reply to theirs, especially if the case is about miscommunication. If clients are outraged because they misunderstood something, explain to them privately. You may send them a private message, email them, or even invite them over to your office to talk about the problem. This is a professional way of saying that you care about their opinions and are willing to correct problems. Accommodate them professionally to get them to delete their bad reviews without you telling them. Who knows, they might comment a positive review once the problem is resolved.
Disseminate and learn. Finally, once the problem has been solved, it’s time to share to your people what you have learned from the problem. Tell them the complete story behind the negative review and how you were able to fix it. In doing so, not only are you training your employees to become more professional in dealing with your customers, but also preventing the same mistakes from happening again. Create new procedures to increase your people’s efficiency. Give them enough and proper training to give them the skills necessary for their positions. Finally, show them the right manner in handling troublesome clients, and comments. Negative reviews are inevitable for even the most highly regarded companies. How you handle such comments spells the difference between aggravating the problem or resolving the issue and learning from the feedback. Being prepared and professional in your approach may even convert critics into loyal customers. Ruben Anlacan Jr. is the president and CEO of BusinessCoach, Inc.