Dojo Nation Dojo Nation - March 2015 | Page 68

WHAT TO DO WHEN SLAPPED WITH NEGATIVE REVIEWS First of all you need to understand that unless the review is inaccurate, a fake review, or violates the policy of the review website in question – you don’t stand a very good chance of actually getting the review removed. To start with, you need to keep an eye out for reviews - whether they are positive or negative. But if you can’t spend the whole day manually monitoring these website, it’s a good idea to consider using an online tool like reviewpush.com to help you monitor the sites automatically. If you want a free alternative, setting up a Google Alert will pretty much do the same thing. Once you have been alerted to a new review, it’s best if you can respond to it right away, good or bad. When you respond to positive reviews, it shows that you’re a gracious business owner who acknowledges the importance of your customers. But when you are responding to negative reviews or complaints, you have several options. For example, if a customer felt your business fell short in some way then you should apologize and promise to do better. But you can turn a negative into a positive while by taking responsibility but also emphasizing how you’re going to do better next time to balance things out. Or you can even engage with the customer and ask ideas from them. Apologize for any inconvenience caused and then ask if they have suggestions on how you can do things better. Whatever you do, just be polite. The good thing about responding to negative reviews is that 33% of the reviews are amended and become a positive review instead when they get a response from busi