No matter how many well-trained and attentive employees you have, or the amount of top-notch products and services offered at your self storage facility, sooner or later you’re bound to get a few negative reviews online. You can’t predict or prepare for what these reviews will be, but you can have a plan of action to use as a guide when the time comes to address the issue. Listed below are a few of the biggest mistakes businesses make when confronted with a negative online review.
Making a Scene
Becoming defensive is a natural response for anyone who feels like they’re being attacked, especially when it comes to protecting your business’s reputation from an adversity. While you’d really like to let these customers have it, by all means, don’t. Otherwise, you’ll end up making a name for yourself in a bad way (along with the other businesses who were quick to forget that maintaining composure is vital to customer service).
Jackie Huba, who writes about word-of-mouth and customer loyalty on Forbes.com, covers the controversy one business faced after attempting to fine customers for posting any negative reviews on Yelp!. In the article, she mentions that one of the biggest takeaways of the situation is for businesses to let go of the idea that you can control what customers say about you, online or not.
“The worst possible thing I’ve seen is someone from the company responding publicly in an extremely negative way, calling out the comment, or berating the person for their opinion,” says Huba.
Reactions like these go down in the books for one thing and one thing only—being unprofessional.
Ignoring or Deleting a Comment
There’s no button for making the reviewer and their opinion disappear, so deleting the comment or pretending not to see it in the first place doesn’t solve anything.
Few exceptions to this rule exist, unless the comment poses a threat to safety, or anything else along those lines. Huba explains that some companies may delete a comment if the reviewer mentions a specific employee.
“The comment would have to border on being inappropriate in terms of using foul language or the like,” says Huba. “The key is to have some guidelines set in place on your website/digital property—you want to spell out the rules of commenting so people aren’t surprised, and then you can point back to those rules.”
Not Responding in a Timely or Authentic Manner
Instead of trying to come up with a run-of-the-mill reply just for the sake of responding, focus on what would actually make the situation better, or even solve the problem entirely. Don’t put it off for fear of what could come from the conversation—the sooner you take control, the sooner both your business and the customer can move on.
In fact, how you handle the problem may even evoke positive feelings about your business, not only from the once-upset customer, but everyone who witnessed the interaction as well. Showing concern and intention to make up for a bad customer experience goes a very long way.
“The best thing to do is acknowledge the person posting the comment,” Huba explains. “For every person who complains to a company, there are 25 people who don’t, so you want to at least thank them for their comment and that they took the time to say something.”
Huba says every company makes mistakes, and it’s okay to own up to them. “Everyone’s watching what you’re doing when you respond to another customer online, and we need to realize that.”
Bio: Jackie Huba is a contributor to Forbes.com, and has also had work featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Fast Company. Jackie coauthored two books on word-of-mouth and customer loyalty: Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force and Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message. Most recently, Huba penned Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics, where she compares Lady Gaga’s relationship with select fans to the relationship brands should work to have with their core customers.
