An Accountants Guide to Dealing With Negative Reviews Online
Posted by Marketing Man in Marketing for Accountants,Online Marketing,Review Sites | August 19, 2012So, one day you decide to Google your business name to see what information is floating around the web about your company and lo and behold you spot a bad review from an (alleged) past customer. Your instinctive reaction is to log in to the site and fire a rebuttal at the reviewer explaining how it was all their fault and your company is blameless.
You need to stop for a minute and clear your head before doing something to make the situation worse.
No matter how hard you try and justify your rebuttal, you are in essence telling potential customers (who will potentially view this conversation) that if they don’t like the service provided — you couldn’t care less.
Going on the defensive and writing an argumentative reply may or may not be your first reaction but I can honestly tell you that it is very rarely the right course of action. Search engines have long memories so your response to any review, good or bad, is likely to remain in the public domain for a very long time so it is very important that you respond in a professional manner to give potential customers looking at the review the confidence that you did everything in your power to right the wrongs.
Obviously as the business owner you have no control over who leaves a review on a third party site or what the content of their review will be, the decision you need to make is not IF you need to respond but HOW you need to respond.
Dealing with negative reviews
First off relax and take a deep breath, it’s not the end of the world. Very few companies can boast a perfect record when it comes to dealing with customers so negative experiences are bound to happen, no matter how hard you try to avoid them.
- Read the review and assess it, as an accountant it should be fairly clear if this person was using your services or not, determine whether it is a legitimate review or maybe a fake review planted by a competitor.
- If you are sure that the review is a fake, and you have proof to back it up, contact the site administrator and ask for the review to be taken down. A lot of sites will remove fake reviews but you must be prepared to show ample proof to justify it’s removal.
- An important point to bear in mind is that in the eyes of a potential customer the reviewer is (almost) always right. Your negative review may be completely false but unless you can prove it there is likely not a great deal you can do about it. Your goal here is to change the perception of the person looking at the review to show that you care about your customers and will react to complaints.
- Try to put aside the feeling that you are being victimised or cheated and look at the review objectively. If you were a potential customer stumbling across this review, what sort of response would you like to see? What would it take to convince you that the business has done everything possible to put things right?
- When responding use your real name and give them a way to contact you. It is very important that potential customers see that a real person has responded to the review and that they care enough to post up contact information.
- Write your reply in a professional manner. Start off by introducing yourself with your name and position within the company (owner/director etc.) and give them a real way to make contact. Then tell the reviewer that you would like the opportunity to put things right and that they can make contact with you at THEIR convenience.
- Assuming the complaint is genuine try not to get into specifics within your reply and certainly stay away from finger pointing or “well you should have….” responses. If you absolutely must publicly explain the situation then make sure you explain how you have made the required changes to ensure it won’t happen again.
- Promising things you can’t or won’t follow through on will only inflame the situation if the reviewer attempts to take you up on them, so be very careful when making offers for recompense.
- I can’t stress this enough – be enthusiastic and sincere about putting things right. Do not make it seem like someone is holding a gun to your head. Everyone makes mistakes and most people do understand that, however it’s the businesses that go out of their way to make those mistakes right that stand out in the public’s mind.
Reviews are all about public perception, whether the person leaving the review is right or wrong or even a shady competitor out for blood, you have the ability to change the perception of those that find your business listing in the future, with just a few keystrokes.
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About the Author – Marketing Man
Marketing Man is a superhero marketer hell bent on a personal crusade to improve the websites and marketing of UK accountancy firms. Check him out on Google+
