What to do about bad reviews?

Bad reviews are like Thanos: they’re both “inevitable”.

Don’t feel too bad, though. A bad review is the norm, not the exception.

Just look at the websites of the big brands you admire and you can see that no one has a perfect 100% satisfaction rate. It doesn’t matter how huge the brand is or how amazing the product is – it’s impossible to please everyone.

Just think about it: if you saw a website that had 100 reviews and all of these are 5-star reviews, you’d feel a little bit skeptical, wouldn’t you? After all, 67% of B2B buyers want to see a mix of positive and negative reviews before they can finalize their purchase.

Now that you know that bad reviews are normal and that you can’t just snap your fingers to make them go away, in today’s video, we’ll talk about how you can effectively handle bad reviews through this three-step process. Don’t worry, you don’t need Thor’s hammer to make this happen:

1. Monitor your bad reviews so you can respond on a timely manner.

Have a system that notifies you each time you receive a bad review. For example, with CM Commerce, you can choose to be notified of reviews which achieve a certain rating (or less) and you customize the rating level. So you might pick 3 stars or less, or 1 star ratings only.

Strike while the iron is hot so you can increase the possibility of your customer engaging with you. This can also diffuse the tension and communicate how much you care about your customers. On average, 53% of customers expect businesses to reply to their online reviews within seven days so can you imagine the positive impact to your customer when you reply to their online review in less than an hour?

2. Empathize with your customer and never ever be defensive.

Be sincere when apologizing but be objective when assessing the bad review you’ve received.

Start with a sincere “Hey, John, I’m really sorry about [reason why they’re upset].” This statement shows that you’re listening to them – you’re open to start a meaningful conversation with them and you’re accepting that the situation may be something that you’re partly responsible for.

Once you’ve apologized, address the customer’s concern or issue and fix it accordingly.

If they’ve received a defective product, apologize and tell them that you’ve sent a replacement immediately.

If they’ve received an item on a later date than expected, you can’t really fix slow delivery since it already happened. So if you can’t fix something that already happened, offer a simple compensation to make up for your mistake. Giving them store credit, a discount code, a freebie or even a refund (in extreme cases) works.

Just remember to always apologize first. After all, 37% of customers are satisfied with service recovery when they are offered something of monetary value (e.g., a refund or credit) but their satisfaction doubles to 74% when there’s an apology on top of the compensation.

The goal here is to improve your customer’s impression of you: from a one-star review, perhaps you can shift it to a 4-star or even a 5-star review instead. Sounds corny, but handling a bad review is like turning your customer’s frown upside down. Not everyone will be 100% pleased with your product & service, but it’s worth a try, right?

3. If you were successful in improving your customer’s impression of your business, ask for an updated review.

Once you’ve established that your customer is now satisfied with the resolution of their concern, and you’ve managed to turn that frown upside down, it’s now time to ask for an updated review from them. With CM Commerce, they can simply submit a new review via the email request or review form and it will overwrite the old one.

It’s better if they mention that they had concerns before, and that you were helpful in rectifying this. This way, you’re not only selling your high-quality product – you’re also guaranteeing great customer service to go with the product you’re offering. Not to mention the added bonus that if you resolve a complaint in your customer’s favor, they’ll do business with you again 70% of the time.

And who would say no to repeated customers, right?

Hopefully, this three-step process helps you to better address bad reviews in the future. Any comments you’d like to add? Let me know below. See you again next week. Cheers.

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash