How to Calmly Confront Bad Reviews and Turn Them Into Growth

We entrepreneurs pour our hearts and souls into our businesses. They are the products of our creative energy, our passion-made manifest.

If you’re like me, you assume that any customer who takes the time to leave a review wouldn’t dream of giving anything less than five stars. You may have even come to expect a steady stream of glowing reviews, so when a customer leaves a one- or two-star review, it can feel like the biggest gut punch.

You’re not alone in this. I’ve gone through it personally, and I can tell you, first of all, congratulations! Any business or brand worth its salt will inevitably attract haters. Your business is growing, maturing and scaling to a point where occasional negative feedback is inevitable. That said, the way in which you respond to this feedback is critical. Don’t underestimate the damaging effect that bad reviews can have on your business, especially if the complaints are consistent in nature, highlighting problems that need urgent attention.

The entrepreneur should offer measured, thoughtful responses to negative reviews but not every complaint is created equal. Here are a few important considerations and strategies for handling the dreaded negative review.

Related: Bad Reviews Can Destroy a Small Business. But If You Get One, Here’s How to Bounce Back.

Is it legit?

Some reviews are just bogus. One of your competitors may be trying to undermine your business and thinks that leaving one or more bad reviews is the way to do it. Someone may confuse your business with another. Or, someone may simply be trolling and wants to use your business as the butt-end of an inside joke.

These reviews are a fair bit easier to deal with than the ones that have some basis in reality. If you report an illegitimate review to Google or Yelp, they are likely to remove the bogus review from their site.

When to respond

Most business owners understand that having the option to reply to negative reviews presents an advantage, a chance to mitigate the damage done. But many business owners, unfortunately, do not respond as effectively as they could.

Samara Scott-Hunter, host of the Salon Rising podcast, has noticed an off-putting defensiveness in how other business owners often respond to negative reviews and believes there’s a better way. After being blindsided by a one-star review that Scott-Hunter felt was deeply unfair, she decided to wait before posting her response. Her cool-off period lasted a whole month, and when she did respond, she made sure she was in the right frame of mind to do so.

I remember I was sitting in front of my fireplace. I was just in a really happy place, and it was a Sunday afternoon. I thought to myself, I’m going to respond to that review, because I feel really happy right now.

There’s wisdom here. If you’re like me and many other entrepreneurs, receiving a bad review elicits a highly emotional reaction. In most cases, you don’t want that red-hot emotion showing up in your public written response to the review. Nor do you want your hasty reply to be met with subsequent complaints and rebuttals from your critic. Therefore, do what Scott-Hunter did, and allow yourself a cooling-off period. Not only will this improve the quality of your response, but it will also be less likely that you’ll bait your critic into an unproductive back-and-forth.

Related: 94% of Customers Say a Bad Review Made Them Avoid Buying From a Brand. Try These 4 Techniques to Protect Your Brand Reputation.

How to respond

You may also invite the customer to reach out to your firm’s dedicated support staff. Do this by providing the name, email and phone number for your support personnel in your reply. My company has a dedicated customer experience lead who acts as a first responder in the event of a bad review.

For me, the typical format for replying to bad reviews should consist of an apology. I don’t think you need to explicitly admit to wrongdoing, but you can express regret for the customer’s negative experience. Next, you need to express empathy. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and understand that she may be providing this feedback not to hurt your business but to help it improve.

That said, let’s not be naïve; as your business grows, you will encounter some customers who are simply impossible to please. These customers may have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, recently lost their pet or a loved one, who knows — but for whatever reason, they’re determined to have a go at you online. I advise concluding your response by directing your customer to the relevant support personnel in your organization and assuring them that every reasonable action will be taken to address their complaint. My company has a dedicated customer experience lead who acts as a first responder in the event of a bad review. Her name, email and phone number is provided to the customer along with my response.

If possible, you or a member of your support team should reach out to the customer privately and do what you can to address their complaint. If you are successful here, and the customer is satisfied, then you may ask the customer to modify their negative review, perhaps changing one- or two-stars to four- or five.

Be careful here, you don’t want to come across as pushy, as if you’re dead set on getting the customer to change their review or take it down. Approach the situation with a genuine curiosity about the customer’s experience, with a real desire to know where things went wrong. Don’t ask for any favors without first making it abundantly clear how much you care about their experience with your business or brand and appreciate their feedback.

Soliciting and screening reviews

When it comes to soliciting customer reviews and containing negative feedback before it goes public, there’s no shortage of CRM (customer relationship management) software utilities from which to choose.

If you use one or more of these utilities, keep in mind that platforms such as Google and Yelp prohibit the practice of “review gating,” which is the selective promotion of positive reviews. A review-gating software may email a recent customer, ask them about their experience and direct them to post a review on Google or Yelp if and only if they’ve had a five-star experience.

While review gating is frowned upon, there’s nothing wrong with a business providing great services or products and actively soliciting honest feedback. A winning and ethical attitude for a business is to welcome all feedback and to utilize the negative feedback in pursuit of continuous improvement.

Related: How to Remove Negative Reviews Online and Protect Your Online Reputation

Try not to take it personally

Don’t take it personally. Yes, way easier said than done. But as an entrepreneur, it’s imperative that you identify the growth opportunity in every setback. Even if you find yourself heartbroken by a string of bad reviews about the business you’ve worked so hard to build, the right approach is to respond attentively, proactively and with resolve to make all the needed adjustments and improvements. Craft your responses to be impassive, empathetic and constructive. Remember, you can never please everyone all of the time. So, stay open-minded, stay humble and let every challenge sharpen your resolve to build and run a business worthy of your passion.

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