Something that can make any business owner cringe is the dreaded negative review. You’re working away or even chilling out in the evening and up it pops; terrible service, rude staff etc…

The fear of negative reviews or comments is even something that can cause some businesses to not want to be too visible online, however in an ever-growing digital world, there is, unfortunately, no way around this.

Imagine you’re researching a business for a new conservatory and they’ve got hundreds of positive reviews on Google, but none negative. Would anything inside you begin to think that these positive reviews were just too good to be true?

Amazingly, this can sometimes be the case and a negative review can actually validate your positive reviews as being genuine! As a marketer, I am consistently reading articles about fake reviews and this is all too common practice.

Provided they are handled well and you have plenty of positive feedback, the odd negative review is not an issue.

There are a lot of reasons why people leave negative reviews, however, sometimes they come completely out of the blue.

To understand how to not only prevent but deal with them, here are the main top reasons why they are left:

• Your service has failed and left a dissatisfied customer
• Your customer has tried to deal with their concern, but failed and feel they are left with no choice
• Someone has got the wrong company (yes, this happens!)
• A sad, lowlife troll just felt like leaving a negative comment
• A competitor has something in for you

So, you’ve received a negative review or comment. The next step is to do something about it, but the question you are probably asking yourself is quite what to do!

Well, here’s the first thing. Don’t take it personally and respond with an attack on the reviewer or choose not to respond atal. Doing either of these things can only risk damaging your brand.

If you know the reviewer and are unaware of the situation, we always recommend replying simply to say sorry, the service was not what they expected and asking them to get in touch as you have not heard from them. You will also want to contact them directly to resolve the matter.

Here’s the point. Whether a negative review is genuine or not, you will want to engage and reply, asking publically for them to contact you in order for the matter to be resolved or simply being polite, honest, and genuine.

If you have never provided a service to the reviewer or the review was left in error, make sure to say so (politely) in your response. Sometimes mistakes happen and it’s all about the way you deal with them.

The other thing you will want to make sure you do is to get lots of positive reviews! We always recommend around ten positive reviews for every negative review in order that it does not affect your overall score all that much.

Has the review highlighted an internal issue you were not aware of? If so, then it could actually be a helpful thing.

Businesses often live or die on their reputation and a negative review could potentially bring an issue to your attention that you did not previously know about. Look internally; did something go wrong? If so, look back over it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I hope you found this article helpful. If you would like to discuss any of the points above then I would be more than happy to help. Just drop me an email at nathanbrown@robusmarketing.com.

Nathan