Bad reviews

Bad Yelp Review

A merchant called me last week regarding a bad review they received on Yelp, wanting to know what he could “do about it”. I almost responded: nothing.

The structure of unfiltered reviews with Social Media can cut both ways. It’s great for consumers, it’s great businesses that provide top quality service, but what do you do when you’re unfairly criticized by a sour customer? No matter how well you run your business, sooner or later someone is going to get ticked-off about something.

My immediate response to the client was there’s not much you can or should do if you can’t resolve the gripe. Take a deep breath. It’s best to just thank them for the business and the feedback. It’s easy to be misunderstood in this medium, and a bad situation can easily get worse, so it’s good idea is to keep your response short, polite and very general in nature.

Bad City Search Review

Last year I had another client get slammed on City Search by an unhappy bridesmaid that she had done a dress for. The details that I received suggested that there was a bad experience at the wedding that had more to do with the customers anger, than way her dress fit (she had declined to try it on when she picked it up the day or two before the event).

My suggestion was to let it go. The bridal shop had dozens of great reviews and this was the first one in the shops long history. Against my advise, they hired an attorney. The lawyer waited a few months in order to let things cool down and drafted a very conciliatory letter that actually resulted in the review being deleted by the customer. This could have gone either way, and in my opinion the expense was probably not worth the trouble and the risk of another “cyber attack”. The bottom line was, with or without the ding, the shop still had a 5 out of 5 star rating.

Another reaction many merchants have is to call in all their friends and fans to layer good reviews, trying to push the bad one down. Sounds like an effective idea, but this can back-fire too. In this ever evolving social media word, SM’s are getting savvy to ploys like this and will sometimes recognize the tactic and remove ratings that don’t look natural.

Improper Angies List Review?

A web designer friend of mine did a trade for their SEO and some body work for his car. He subsequently gave them a glowing review for the auto paint job on AngiesList.com. Apparently Angies List identified him as the web designer for that shops site (probably from the IP address), pulled the review and warned them not to do it again. Even though the review was authentic, it appeared that the collision center was writing their own reviews.

For more information on customer reviews check out: https://biz.yelp.com/support/responding_to_reviews

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