How do you handle negative reviews? Do you take them as an opportunity to learn, change, and improve your product or service? Or do you see them as personal attacks that can damage your reputation and your company’s bottom line? Although negativity can be hard to digest, there are ways to work with negative reviews and turn them into positive opportunities for growth and improvement – here are some of the benefits of dealing with negative reviews, and how you can do it.
1) What is the benefit of negative reviews?
Most people think of negative reviews as a detriment, but think about it from a different perspective. Why does your business get negative reviews? It’s pretty rare that anyone would go out of their way to leave a negative review unless there was some kind of problem—and these problems can be useful to you and your company. When you receive a negative review, take some time to read it through and try to identify where exactly things went wrong.
2)How should I respond to a negative review?
As much as we might like to think we can always keep our cool, responding to a negative review is never easy. Usually, though, there’s no need to respond publicly. The best thing you can do is try and understand where your customer is coming from and why they felt compelled to take things public.
Staying rational and explaining the situation from your perspective can be all that is required for other potential clients to understand that you dealt with the review in a calm, balanced and professional way, which speaks volumes about you and your business. Negative reviews can actually help raise the profile of your business, even though it may feel like the end of the world at the time.
3) Make a plan to address the issues
If you can’t improve a problem yourself, ask your trusted team members for help. The important thing is to make a decision quickly and take action. If there is a genuine problem with your product or service, you need to solve it. It may require more training, it may require offering to fix the issue for the client. Once you fix things for one client, they may tell others about their experience and turn that negative into a positive.
4) Why do bad things happen?
In a perfect world, negative customer feedback wouldn’t exist. In reality, however, no business is ever going to be perfect for everyone all of the time—and that’s okay. Realistically, you should expect some people won’t be thrilled with your service or product at times.
Sometimes you may fall short, or sometimes they may be having a bad day, but you cant please everyone all of the time.
5) What if it genuinely wasn’t my fault?
When negative reviews pop up, it can be frustrating to deal with. It’s hard not to wonder what you could have done differently, or even if it was really your fault at all. You might even begin to doubt yourself!
Once you have considered the clients perspective, if you know in your heart of hearts that you did everything correctly, then what then? There may still be more you can do to prevent it happening again…
6) What can I do to prevent it happening again?
Ask yourself, is it because the expectations of my client were not correct? Were they naive? Lacking understanding of what they were paying for or the process? Had unrealistic expectations of the outcome? Just don’t understand the reasons why?
Maybe you could educate the clients further in advance of appointments, explain about processes and possible outcomes at the start of appointments, warn them of the risks that things might go wrong, make them fill in contracts and waivers before they book, make sure they understand their part in the process of getting a happy successful outcome.
7) Don’t Worry Be Happy!
It’s easy to focus on our failures and, as a result, wallow in self-pity. However, it’s better to channel that energy into making something great next time. Negative experiences often lead to positive outcomes; take advantage of them. Don’t let others determine your level of happiness; do that for yourself. When you feel like falling into a pit of negativity, pause and think about how far you’ve come instead. Let it light a fire in your belly to prove any negativity wrong. Don’t forget, jealousy can also drive negativity and maybe it’s a sign of how successful you are becoming!
BOOK a DEMO
If you would like to set up contracts and waivers in Savvy to protect yourself and your business, or new onboarding emails for new clients to educate and help them understand and manage their expectations, then book a demo today!
