Have you ever gone online to roast a business after they delivered you a spectacularly disappointing experience? Be honest—you at least considered it, right?
The internet provides many platforms and avenues to vent that steam when a sketchy company, lying salesperson or faulty product sets your teapot boiling. Some look for internal resolution, with a phone call or email to customer service. Others take their frustration public, telling their story on social media, their blog site, or in an online review.
Negative online reviews affect your business. Period. But in what way and to what extent? Here are four principles we’ve learned from watching how negative reviews affect businesses (and four actions you can take to manage them).
Negative Reviews Amplify Your Failures
We all mess up. Your business is no exception. How those mistakes are dealt with is vital to your reputation.
Negative online reviews testify to your failures, leaving a loud record for others to read. If you messed up and it made it to an online review, the whole world has just heard the conversation on speakerphone.
Negative reviews broadcast errors and make sure more people hear the story, causing doubt for those relying on reviews to know if they should trust your business.
Negative Reviews Scare Customers Away
A fool is someone who hears advice and fails to take heed. When your customer or client leaves a negative online review, they are advising others: Stay away!
If a potential customer is browsing the internet for a product or service and repeatedly read, “Stay away!” based on reviews, they’d be a fool to go through with a purchase or contract. They’ve been warned that they have a high chance of being disappointed by the decision, and they’d be wise to find an alternative.
Negative reviews, though they vary in credibility, scare customers away by making them fear the worst will happen to them with your company. Customers now have low trust in their transaction, and are likely to take their business elsewhere. You won’t even know they considered you.
Negative Reviews Help Your Competition
Potential customers will often still make a purchase, even if they are scared away from your company. Where will they go? To your competition.
Your negative reviews give your competitors a leg up in race for market share. Reviews telling of bad experiences make your potential customers feel better about trusting your competition rather than you. You’ve given them an easy road to an alternative, because they were warned by your past failures.
Negative Reviews Make Customers Cautious
Sometimes, even when warned, people take the risk. Your potential buyer looks at your company, and they like what you have. You’re an industry leader, and maybe even have a solid brand to build credibility. They want your offering, but they go ahead and research online to know what to expect from other customers.
While skimming through online reviews, the buyer finds some alarming negative feedback. They hear that some customers received fakes. Others were promised a certain timeline and delivered another, arriving after the wedding!
The potential buyer may still go through with a purchase from your business; however, they’re no longer optimistic or even neutral. The well-researched buyer is now extremely cautious in choosing you. They are anxiously waiting for something to go wrong. They look for issues, even minor.
Negative online reviews set you up for failure by creating a poor expectation from your customer.
So… What Do I Do With Negative Reviews?
If you get a negative review, relax. The worst thing you can do is to overreact and defend yourself. Mixed reviews (especially those that complain about very picky issues) can make you more credible than having a perfect 5.0-star rating. Spiegel found that purchase likelihood peaks in the 4.0 to 4.7 range. That means a few less-than-perfect reviews won’t kill your business. Breathe… it’s going to be okay.
However, if negative reviews cloud your visible feedback, you’re in for trouble. Customers are silently taking your potential revenue somewhere else, and profits will drop. Take action today to address negative online reviews.
Here are our suggestions to manage negative online reviews:
- Take immediate action to resolve complaints expressed in negative online reviews. Use a review monitoring software to be notified immediately when you receive a negative review. Reach out to the unhappy customer right away. Seek to amend the issue, and negotiate a fair solution. Oh, and kindly ask them to update their review if you’ve fixed the problem.
- Listen closely to the themes found in your negative reviews. One negative experience is inevitable. If you see a number of reviewers concerned by the faulty adapter powering your device, get to the root of the problem in production. If clients can’t get a hold of you, check your emails more often, or hire someone to answer the phone.
- Find better ways to hear complaints internally. Follow up with customers after a purchase to ensure everything went okay. Make sure it’s easy to find your customer service number or a feedback form on your website.
- Recruit positive reviews. Ask for and amplify the voice of your happy customers to tell the positive side of your company. Outweigh the bad with good, and make it more likely that your leads will choose you over your competition.
Don’t be a victim of a few angry customers yelling into the internet. Actively manage negative online reviews by hearing and responding, and you’re sure to build more trust… and grow revenue.