Creating Positive Customer Interactions Online

So it finally happened. Despite your best efforts, someone had a bad experience at your shop and posted a negative review online. What do you do? How do you handle it? What do you say?

First off, don’t ignore the review. Reviews are becoming more and more powerful in the new digital age. 90% of consumers say that they check online reviews before making a purchase and while positive reviews are helpful, negative reviews have a greater impact on the decision making process.

So what do you do if you can’t ignore the review? Here are a few suggestions on how to counteract that negative post:

• Prevention is key

The best thing you can do with negative reviews is to make sure they never happen. Yes, if you sell a service then you are constantly engaging with a customer and are more likely to slip up. Despite the odds, try your hardest to work on the customer experience that your company offers. Treat every person that comes through your door with respect and make sure your employees understand the level of service you expect of them.

• Put yourself in the customers shoes.

We know you love your company and want to think that your employees could do no wrong, but take a moment to admit the customer might be being 100% honest in their review. The customer clearly took time out of their day to write a negative review about what happened to them. Go ahead and admit something happened that could have been prevented and apologize. Recognize the problem and try to make it right.

• Respond quickly

Don’t be afraid to join the conversation. Publically reply to the negative review as soon as you can after the review has been made. Mention that you are sorry the user had a poor experience and ask the individual to reach out so that you can talk about their experience with them. See if there is anything you can do to give them a more positive feeling when they think of your company. You never know, if you work hard to change their experience from a negative one to a positive one, then they might change their review.

• Mend the situation

Give your company a redo. Offer the customer another product or service appointment for free. It may not financially make sense to offer giveaways, but it will make the customer understand that you mean business and truly want to make things right.

• Take the review as a chance to improve

Sometimes it is hard to be critical of something you are so close to. So get excited. Someone with an outside perspective has told you something you can work on and improve! Take the criticism as a chance to grow your business instead of a defeating blow to your ego.

For some other ideas of ways to handle negative reviews, check out this Huffington Post article.

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