Angie's List, Yelp, Google, Facebook. Online review sites and social media present a double-edged sword for businesses. Consumers can praise, hate, rant or rave about a business and reach thousands, even millions, of other consumers. It's great when they are saying good things about your business, but not so great when they are trashing it. Studies show that 7 out of 10 consumers believe online reviews as much as they do family and friends. Fifty-seven percent of people avoid businesses with bad online reviews. So how do you deal with bad online reviews about your business?
- Don't ignore them. They will not go away on their own and your lack of acknowledging them will look like you don't care about your customers.
- Respond quickly. Be polite and apologize for what went wrong. Resist the urge to be argumentative.
- Learn from it. Think of a bad review like free market research. Try to use it to improve your business. The customer may have found a legitimate problem with your service or product which you can now address.
- Know that you can and can't do in your response. You will have to learn the policies of each review site. Some let you challenge a review that you feel is unfounded, others leave all posts up, but all you to respond.
- Have a system for dealing with reviews. Make sure someone is in charge of review sites and responding to any complaints so they don't slip through the cracks.
You can sign up for Google Alerts which will monitor what is being posted about your business. Brandify scans social media for your business.
There are reputation management services available, but beware of what is promised. According to BAI/Kelsey, a Chantilly, Va. media research firm, businesses are expected to spend $700 million on technology tools and services to monitor business reputations. Many sites promise to remove negative reviews, but they cannot always do that, even though they charge for it. Reputation.com, one of the oldest management firms, doesn't try to remove all bad reviews. They try, instead, to move positive reviews to the forefront.