Negative Reviews and Customer Service

I came across an excellent infographic today at Zendesk that gives spot on information on how some negative reviews end up being posted.

The part that really caught my eye was their statistic that 96% of online complaints were a result of double disappointments meaning that something had happened to upset the consumer and then, when they tried to get the matter resolved, they were wronged again.

These things happen to even the best of companies - a series of honest errors, a day where technology fails us completely, or the customer falls prey to a weak link in our system or staffing. It is frustrating to everyone, but when the customer goes public with his or her complaint, if we are paying attention, it can give us the opportunity to right the wrong... or wrongs as the case may be!

If you've checked out my website, you know that I advocate for very careful monitoring of reviews that are posted about your business for just this kind of situation. As soon as you know a negative post has been made, take action to reach the customer and work on mending those bridges. The longer you wait, the more people will see the negative review post and the more damage it will do.

If your business is one where you know your clients and have access to their contact information, the best thing you can do is to pick up the phone and call the customer with a personal apology. Work to determine where the problem(s) originated and offer a solution or recompense.

In situations where you do not have the ability to call the customer, be sure you reach out to them as soon as possible on the public forum where they posted the negative review. Don't go into great detail in your response, but let them know that you have heard their complaint and that you'd like to try to make it right. Ask him or her to contact you and make sure you provide both an email address and a phone number that you will personally check.

Be very careful when you post publicly - remember that your audience is no longer just the person who was wronged. Your audience is now that person and everyone else who is reading along - every potential customer deciding if he or she should use your services or turn to your competitors. It is always in your best interest to be kind!

Hopefully most of this is common sense to you and you can relate to your customer having experienced the double-whammy as a consumer yourself when things just don't go right.

Keep an eye on maintaining excellent customer relations, monitor all of the major review sites closely, and be quick to make amends and you should be able to avoid a customer service fiasco!

Ann M. Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - an online review managing and monitoring service for businesses new to review websites. If your business is needing assistance handling negative reviews or monitoring the high number of review sites, please check our website and program information at www.impressionsrm.com. 

Why manage online reviews?

People talk and there isn't anything you can do about it. Or is there?

When I first started managing online reputations for businesses, I had no idea that there were things every business should be doing to manage the conversations that were taking place about their businesses online. I was surprised to find that even though sites like Yelp, Google+ Places, Foursquare, and Yahoo Local were designed to give consumers a voice, that they also give business owners a powerful means of showing the best (or worst) of their customer service abilities.

Before the rise of review websites, if consumers were unhappy with the service or product they received, they could go back to the business and complain. Sometimes this led to good customer service and sometimes not. Either way, that was just about the only recourse consumers had and some customers, either from bad experiences or from shyness or an overbearing sense of being polite, chose not to say anything when they were unhappy and just never used the same business again.

As business owners, it has always been in our best interests to provide excellent customer service and most of us do everything we can to ensure the customer leaves happy and ready to tell the world how fantastic our business really is. So, it hurts when we see a negative review posted on Yelp, Google, or any other publicly view-able site.

That's where we have a choice - we can turn the other cheek, ignore what is being said OR we can enter the conversation and use that feedback to strengthen our businesses and improve customer relations. After all, we cannot effectively improve our companies if we don't know there are problems to be addressed!

The different review sites are set up so that business owners can "claim" the pages that have been created specifically for their businesses. Once you go through this process, you can update your information there, post pictures, add links to your website, and, most importantly, you can respond to people who have posted reviews for you!

For the first time, all those customers who left unhappy have a voice - and a very loud voice given the high number of people who use review sites to research businesses and products - but business owners also have an excellent tool to reach out and mend bridges. We can restore relationships with our clients and correct things we never knew were wrong.

It's been the best part of my job as an online reputation manager to see clients turn a one star rating to a five star rating as they entered the conversation and corrected errors with their clients. It can happen for your business too - are you ready to manage your online review websites?

Ann M. Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - an online review managing and monitoring service for businesses new to review websites. If your business is needing assistance handling negative reviews or monitoring the high number of review sites, please check our website and program information at www.impressionsrm.com.