How to Promote Positive Customer Reviews & Manage the Bad Reviews

With social media, customer review sites, and millions of blogs available online, it’s never been easier for customers to speak their minds. Customers can easily post content representing your brand's best or worst - creating negative buzz.

While negative posts typically get more attention, it's important to find happy customers who'd love to share their good experiences with others. To keep these positive reviews coming, building relationships with these customers and eliciting their good feedback is necessary.

In this guide, we’ll explore several success tips on how to get your best customers to give great customer reviews. We’ll also show you how to use good reviews to your advantage - and how to handle negative reviews properly.What is a Customer Review?

The Importance of Customer Reviews

While digital marketing has become the strategy of choice for today’s businesses, it doesn’t mean that word of mouth isn’t a factor. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool, and it’s become even more relevant as review sites become more popular.

Online reviews are today’s version of word-of-mouth marketing, and they can boost or severely damage your business, product, or service reputation.

Benefits of Positive Customer Reviews

It matters when a customer shares a positive experience on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, TripAdvisor, or other platforms. These reviews are social proof that your business offers value to customers. In fact, customer research from Harvard Business School shows that a +1-star boost on Yelp leads to a 9 percent sales increase.

Good customer reviews also come with SEO benefits since Google favors high-authority sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. In addition, we can also see search benefits by collecting Google customer reviews.

Many small businesses may not reach the top of search results, but their reviews may appear in a favorable position. Businesses with many excellent reviews may even find themselves at the top of Google’s results.

How to Get Reviews

Brands must care about what customers are thinking as well as what they are saying online. So, how do you receive more positive reviews – and reduce negative ones? Angry customers may be quick to type up a scathing review, but how do you get happy customers to share their experiences? Here are two tips:

1. Make it Simple

Showing website visitors exactly where to leave reviews is a great way to increase positive buzz. Include a direct link to the review site or social media platform to make the process easy.

If you meet with customers face-to-face or communicate with them over the phone, let them know that you’d appreciate a review. Then, point them to the platform or site where they can provide the review.

Offering incentives is another good way to increase positive feedback online. For example, you can give special discounts to those who “Like” your Facebook page.

2. How to Ask Customers for Reviews

Sometimes, it’s necessary to simply ask a customer to write a review. This doesn’t mean offering a customer a free product or service in exchange for a glowing review. Such a practice is unethical and often leads to distrust of your brand.

If your business has a brick-and-mortar presence, leaving a QR code that often takes customers to a review site is effective. Another way to encourage reviews is to follow up with customers after a sale. Email thanking the customer for his or her purchase and then asking for a review. Be sure to include a link that points them to the review site in question.

Brick-and-mortar stores also can collect email information from customers as they complete transactions. Offering a discount in exchange for the email address is a good way to entice customers into sharing their information. Once you have this information, you can send messages politely asking for a review.

Drawbacks of Negative Reviews

Of course, a bad review often has the opposite effect of a positive review. Unfortunately, negative reviews also provide more powerful social proof than favorable reviews. While a positive review shows that your business offers value to consumers, a negative review shows a lack of value. This tells customers to steer clear of your brand – and they may also tell others to do so.

Fear of having a negative experience often influences prospective customers’ decision-making process. This concept is known as Prospect Theory, and it was created in 1979 by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The theory outlines how consumers naturally rely on loss aversion when they make purchasing decisions. Ultimately, the hope of having a positive experience is outweighed by the possibility of a negative one.

What Not to Do with Negative Reviews

Staying calm and addressing the customer’s needs will help you survive a negative review. But there also are a few things that brands should never do after getting a bad review, including:

1. Don't Overreact

Don’t immediately issue a press release or make a company-wide change based on one review. Overreacting also might drive even more negative attention to the situation.

2. Don't Ignore the Review

Pretending the review doesn’t exist is almost as bad as providing an impolite answer. To the customer, ignoring his or her review simply reinforces the fact that your brand provides negative experiences. Plus, other customers may wonder if your company actually cares about customer relationships.

3. Don't Drown the Negative Reviews with Positive Ones

Encouraging customers to write positive reviews to “cover” the negative ones is questionable. Customers should want to provide positive reviews on their own accord – forced reviews rarely sound genuine.

Dealing with Negative Customer Reviews

When your brand is consistently getting good reviews, it can offset the occasional bad ones. In most cases, a better than four to one ratio is preferable. However, you can’t please everyone, and there will be a time when a customer becomes dissatisfied with your business.

Unfortunately, there’s a good chance the unhappy customer will share his or her experience with others. If you’re facing an unsightly review, don’t panic – instead, follow directions along with our 4-step process.

Step 1. Assess the Negative Review

When a bad review surfaces, you may feel defensive or extremely apologetic toward the customer. However, it’s important to take a moment to collect your thoughts before responding. Here are a few things to consider as you examine the negative review:

Was it a problem with your product or service or the customer’s unique experience?

Most negative reviews are based on the customer’s experience, not the actual product or service. Product or service issues are usually easy to fix, but a customer service problem sometimes shows a deeper problem. You may need to evaluate your business practices to determine what is troubling the customer.

Is the problem solvable?

While many customer complaints have clear solutions (refund, product replacement, etc.), some are more difficult to solve. Opinion-based reviews often are difficult to resolve because no tangible solutions are available.

Emailing the customer to thank him or her for the feedback may go a long way. Sometimes, one message is not enough, but reaching out may help you better pinpoint the customer’s issue.

Could the review be seen as constructive feedback?

Negative reviews are never pleasant, but they often bring to light company problems. Taking a negative review as constructive criticism allows you to improve your processes.

Step 2. Address the Review

After assessing the negative review, it’s time to contact the customer. Being authentic is key – if your brand appears dishonest, it will make the situation worse. Look at the situation from the customer’s perspective. Would you feel frustrated if this happened to you? What would it take for you to feel satisfied with the company again?

Begin by reassuring the upset customer you will fix the problem. Try to be as specific as possible, mentioning any relevant details. However, make sure you make promises you can deliver on. It’s even better if you set expectations you can over-deliver on.

Step 3. Present a Solution to the Customer

Settling negative reviews isn’t complete until you deliver what you promised. It’s also important to resolve the issues in a timely fashion so that the customer remembers the initial review. A quick response means that the customer may share the now-positive experience with others.

Step 4. Stay Calm – and Move On

After completing these steps, it’s time to calm down and move on. Hopefully, the customer will delete the review after you successfully resolve the issue; however, it may not happen. Don’t pressure the customer to delete the review immediately; give him or her time before contacting them again. In a few weeks, send a friendly message asking if he or she would consider deleting the review.

Customer Reviews: The Ultimate Social Proof

It may be difficult not to take customer reviews personally, especially if you’re a small business. Small businesses rely on positive word of mouth, and a negative review can significantly impact business. Customer reviews affect the public’s perception of your brand, which is incredibly personal for business owners. Click here for more tips on social media best practices.

Despite the personal nature of customer reviews, keep an open mind when viewing the latest feedback on your business. Use the information in customer reviews to improve your processes and improve the customer experience. While bad reviews may seem terrible at the moment, over time, they may be valuable learning experiences for your business.