Just as the name implies, Online Review Management can simply be put as managing online reviews to protect and strengthen the reputation of businesses or a brand.
Online reviews matter as they help you build your brand, inform you of your customers/audience experiences and educate you on ways you can improve your product/service/brand. However, there are circumstances where you can receive bad reviews from clients or customers online and the way such complaints are handled is very crucial to your brand.
Here are some tips to consider when managing bad online reviews.
- Know how to respond
Ensure you use the right tone and words. You will likely see positive and negative reviews. When responding to a bad review, making it a public war is a recipe for reputation disaster. The worst thing you can do for your brand is to trade words with an angry reviewer. But a polite response with the right spin and solution can turn a disgruntled customer into a happy one.
2. Respond quickly
It is important to demonstrate to potential customers or clients that they matter to you and that you empathize with a reviewer regardless of their complaints. Even if you feel you have done no wrong, you can genuinely care that a customer is upset.
3. Do not delete
Rather than deleting a specific harsh review, ask the reviewer to follow up directly with you so you can address their concerns. This removes the dialogue from the public space but shows your willingness to respond to complaints.
4. Learn from patterns
Negative reviews can help provide some relevant information about genuine issues that you may need to address so your brand can be successful. Thus, find out for any similar complaints among reviewers and assess how you can address them.
5. Follow up
Ensure you check back in with a client or customer who posted a negative review to make sure that their issue was resolved. If it has been resolved, consider asking them to update their review.