How to Respond to Negative Reviews ?

The Right Way to Respond to Negative Feedback

For a business, reviews are important because they reflect how the customers receive services or products from your business and the major concerning points that must be resolved. There are various platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Tripadvisor where people leave their reviews, which are read by other customers to make their purchase decisions. Positive reviews are good, but when the negative reviews flood, it affects the business, losing customers from the competing market. Here are some tips to read about how to deal with such negative reviews.

You should apologize: Apologies should be taken from a customer first. You must understand that the customer knows nothing about your company, or they could be in a bad mood. A competitor could write it, or the claims made in a negative review are false. But you have to apologize because you have to be professional with them and also for the sake of your public image. You can ask for more detailed information about the experience they had and listen to them. 

You should take the customer's name in your response: "Dear Sir or Dear Ma'am." This is one of the easiest ways to respond to any customer's review, but it is not a professional way to do that. Here, you should take their name while referring to their review or feedback; it shows that you are talking with the customer and that what you are writing is not an auto-generated response. It will also help them to cooperate with you after seeing that you are starting the conversation in a more cooperative way. 

You should accept negative Reviews or Feedback. It is okay to find that some people don't like your service or product, and it could be anything, whether the price segment, style, or anything else. You can't do anything about that, and you must accept their opinion. You should respond gracefully and apologize. 

Show sympathy to the customer: Another important thing is to understand that your customer is writing negative feedback under frustration, and this frustration comes up when they don't get the service that they have expected, which is why it is important to keep sympathetic behavior with each of your customers. You must smartly use your words while responding to the customers and show your sympathy; if the issue is more serious, then you can carry forward the conversation offline and offer them to contact you by making a phone call or meeting at the office. By doing this, you can make them feel that you are concerned about them and working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. 

Tell the customer that you are working on the solution: Trust your customer's feelings despite the fact that it could be driven by their preferences or feelings. Instead of changing them, you can work on identifying the cause of the issue. Most businesses fail when they are unable to find out the reason behind the negative reviews. Understand that, your customer chooses to write a feedback instead of talkling to your customer service team. 

Pro tip: Let your customers know about you are working on the resolutions and make them updated about it through any means. it helps regain trust of your customer and you can turn them to a potential loyal customers. 

Try to fix the issues ASAP: Not all reviews or feedback are written by your competitors, so a response that offers a solution will work for you because your response would professionally clarify others as well. Fixing the issue will not only improve your business but also show that you don't want other customers to face similar issues again. 

Offer your customers a discount or any compliment: Customers sometimes point out a legitimate issue in your business or product, and you should praise them for that. Here, you can make a positive impression on your business, among others, by offering them a second chance. If their problem is with a product them you can ask them to return and offier them a replacement, or you can offer them a exclusive discount coupon to purchase as well as a complementry. 

How Do You Remove Negative Reviews?

Once you have fixed the issue about what the customer complained about, you can ask them again about the change or solution and whether they liked it or not. Most of the time, people genuinely care about a second chance, and when they get it, they become happy. If you get a positive response from them, then you can smoothly ask them to remove that. But sometimes customers don't like to do that, it's completely fine. Here, in such a case, you can take this as an opportunity to respond publicly about how you care for the customer's concerns and fix them as soon as possible.  

Can You Avoid Getting Negative Feedback?

Yes, it is possible. Negative feedback or a response is inevitable for any business, but it is also possible to avoid or reduce it by practicing the right things and tricks. Here are some of the keys you can use for your business to easily avoid negative feedback.

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys: You must have seen a prompt or page asking you about, "How Satisfied with our Product or Service?" just after your purchase or use of any product or service. These help to identify the issues or customer experience with your website, products, or internal processes. These CSAT surveys, also prevents customer to write anything negative about on review platforms because you have already asked from them. 
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey: It is basically a rating that customers give to you after interacting with your businesses, and you can easily identify how they are having experiences. When any customer gives you a 9/10 rating, you can redirect them to any trusted review platform, such as Google Review or Trustpilot, to write a review. 
• Setting up a feedback button: To prevent customers from writing about anything negative for your business company, you can provide them with a feedback button. It allows them to express their disappointment and feelings. But you must first try to understand them and resolve their problems on a primary basis.