Reviews are an integral part of a business’s reputation, customer loyalty, and sales. When handled correctly, it can reflect a sense of responsibility and acknowledgment for a company.
When A Review Is Harmful
If you get a particularly nasty review, you may have wondered if you can do anything about it. There are cases of business suing a reviewer over a bad review, calling it defamation, and it happens more often than you would think. (Yelp, a popular review site, isn’t safe either.) The reason so many businesses can and do sue is because a negative review can have big impact on their business.
However, that doesn’t mean you should sue, something we cannot stress enough.
For one, you have to recognize that on a site with user-generated content like Yelp, fake posts will happen. Yelp advises businesses to flag offending posts and contact them if “a final adjudication from a court of competent jurisdiction [indicates] that the review is defamatory.” A review is defamatory if:
- It was published with malice and an intention to sabotage
- It is a false statement
- It harms a reputation based on those false statements
Reviewers Who Are Trying to Get Something
There are cases of customers posting false reviews in an attempt to get something, like a woman who tried to get money back from a grocery by claiming that the avocados she bought were rotten. The grocery quickly shut her down, as she had stolen the image from a legitimate complaint the store had in 2014.
If these scenarios happen, it’s important that you be proactive and don’t react.
Don’t Talk Badly About Customers Online
We have talked about a business going off on a reviewer before and this is an example your business should never follow. When your company handles a situation poorly, it can reflect the company as a whole and those who work there.
Make sure when you respond, you are calm and polite. Do not let your response come off as sarcastic or angry, this will show your customers that those running your company site are not mature enough to handle the situation in a proper manner and does not care about its customers. It is a bad look for your company overall.
How To Properly Respond To Harmful & False Reviews
Now that you know the types of reviews people will leave, we are going to show you a few ways to correctly respond to harmful reviews. There are four steps when addressing the issue and constructing a response:
- Acknowledge your appreciation for them as a customer
- Identify the problem
- Describe how the problem will be addressed (if needed)
- Encourage them to continue to use your products or services
Example: Harmful Review
“Dear [customer name],
Thank you for being a customer at [company name], we truly appreciate your business. In regard to your issue of [name issue/problem], we would love to address it more personally. We are a company that takes our reviews seriously in order to continuously improve our business. If you would like to email your complaint to us at [email protected]., we will have one of our representatives get in touch with you to fix the problem. At [company name], we strive to [list what company aims to do], we hope to fix your issue of [name related issue]. We hope this doesn’t discourage you from purchasing from us in the future. Please check out our [sale or give a discount when they email]. Thank you.”
Obviously, these responses are subject to change due to the review, but this is a good example to follow.
Allow jWeb to Respond For Your Company
We have many years under our belt of responding to customer reviews at jWeb Media. If you are looking for a company that can manage your social media or website, we are the agency for you!