The Do’s and Don’ts when you’re faced with a Negative Review

Don’t Ignore Negative Reviews

A negative review of your performance might be inevitable. Don’t hide or ignore it out of shame or feel embarrassed. A bad day at the office should not be the baseline for your overall performance. Don’t worry too much, but do learn from it. Feedback should always be used for improvement, not as a demotivating factor.

If it the source of the review is the performance of a single employee, don’t immediately lash out on them. Find out what happened and make way for everyone to learn from the experience. Making employees uncomfortable isn’t going to improve their performance.

Do Share with Your Team

Be transparent with your team and talk about negative feedback. If you can’t talk about a problem, you won’t be able to find a solution.

However you address the issue within your team, make it clear that it’s a constructive discussion. Discuss what went wrong during the incident, how it should’ve been handled in retrospective and looking forward how the team should act to avoid a similar situation.

Don’t Get Defensive

Even if you disagree with what was said about your business, you should take a balanced approach. Avoid debating the little details. Arguing with a dissatisfied client online makes their complaint seem more valid, and worse, it makes your business look bad.

An emotional reaction can end up costing you more business in the long run.

Do Respond to Reviews

Regardless whether the complaint was fair or not, you need to always respond in a timely manner to negative reviews. Acknowledge their frustration, and thank them for their feedback. If you are in the wrong, issue a sincere apology.

Don’t Let a Negative Review Be Your Only Review

Getting a negative feedback occasionally is almost inevitable, but, you don’t want the negative one to be the first thing your audience sees. At the same time, don’t post staged reviews of your own business or tell your employees to do so. It renders your business a bad look, and will eventually hurt your business.

Do Ask Customers to Leave Reviews

The best way to negate bad reviews is to get more positive reviews. As you get more reviews, the negative one loses its significance for your customers and is less likely to be seen.

Earn your positive reviews. Deliver an experience that’s worth promoting and simply ask your best customers to leave a review. People like to support a business they love. Give your customers enough reasons to love your brand and you should be prepared to deal with any negative feedback coming your way.