How to Handle One-Star Reviews Like a Pro: A Business Owner's Guide

This is one of those things that every business owner hates, getting a one star review. Now, while I understand we usually get angry because we're like, ah, someone left us a one star review. We work so hard on our businesses for someone just to, you know, crap all over our hard work and our dedication and listen, before we get into what to do, when you get one of these one star reviews, someone is always going to be unhappy with, with your service. You cannot make everyone happy. I know there's a saying like if you made everyone happy, you'd be selling ice cream. But understand there's people who are lactose intolerant, so they wouldn't be very happy at all of you were selling ice cream. So you can't make everyone happy in business. And I think if you can make, you know, 97% of your customers very, very happy, there's always going to be those people who will complain and there are going to be reviews that are completely illegitimate that you can report and get removed. We got a one star review once. It was someone. Our building is connected to a Dunkin Donuts, which is a coffee shop here in New England. And it was someone, I don't know why they gave us a one star review as a music school, but they were in Dunkin Donuts. They gave us a one star review. They said, I don't know, I'm in Dunks. And that was the review. So we reported it, obviously saying, and we had to do it multiple times. Sometimes you have to do it multiple times to get rid of it. And eventually it did go away because it was obvious the person had never been in the business. They even said in the review that they were next door, they weren't at LB Music School. So it was very, very interesting. So I run brick and mortar businesses, so we deal with the public and sometimes you're going to get a one star review. But even if you have an online business like myself too, and you work on reviews and you get a bad review, our first reaction is to get angry. And that's everyone's, that's everyone's reaction. Be like, oh, who's this jerk who left me a one star review? So, you know, I used to panic and I used to do that when we had less reviews. The key is to get a lot more positive reviews. So I pulled up one of our accounts here and you can see right now we have 6,73 reviews and we have a 4.9 rating because someone left us a one star review. Now the good thing about this, there are some positives and there are some negatives. So if you get someone who leaves you a one star review, it actually makes all the good reviews look real. Because if someone's got like 700 five star reviews, yeah, maybe it's awesome. But did you pay someone you know you have that many? Probably not, but actually gives some legitimacy to the other reviews that you have. And you can see here, you know, 73 reviews. One of them is a one star review, which we're going to go through in a moment here and I'll show you how I responded to this. So that when people who read your reviews can analyze your business, because we are business that works with the public. So the first thing I did is I read the review that this person read and I'm just going to read it here for you. I scheduled a class at 5:30pm I arrived with my daughter who was very excited and someone who attended just said to give him a few seconds, probably meaning one of our teachers. And we waited until 6:10pm without knowing anything at all. They should have at least said they didn't schedule the class instead of just watching everyone walk into their classes. Unfortunately, I can only comment on the poor reception they gave us. Now, just some background. Our music school does not have a receptionist there. There's a waiting room and there's a door. And then we have teachers who kind of open the door and let their students in. And our teachers only have access to their schedules, so they're not going to know if someone out there is someone else's student. We do have cameras, so we could check that. So this woman showed up to the school. Now my reaction is that's not good. As the business owner. So the first thing I did, I said, okay, I'm going to go find out who this person is. Because we looked and I said, you know, my response, my initial response was whatever their name was, I'm very sorry that this was your experience. I checked the schedule and I could not find a client with this particular name, so could not give you a call personally. I will be checking in with my remote administrative staff to see what went wrong. And I made sure to say remote administrative staff so that they knew we don't have admins on site if someone read this later. Our teachers only have access to their own personal schedule. So when they open the waiting room door, they may have only seen their student and welcomed them in. Again, I apologize for the experience, but promise to look into what went wrong. Thank you. And I put my name as the owner. All right, so it's showing, you know, this. I think I responded within an hour or two of this review popping up into our feed and we did some searching. I reached out to my administrator and I said, hey, like what happened here? I looked at the schedule, you know, I said this must have been 5:30 on a Friday. So it must have been this teacher because this was the only teacher that had an opening. Like what happened? And my administrator said, oh, you know, I know that person. I spoke with them. We were discussing times and I guess something got lost in an email chain which sometimes happens in business. So this is a good thing because we found that there was a communication issue that had happened. But also we found out that the person never paid for the lesson. So they showed up for service that they never paid for. They never filled out our enrollment package. They never paid for the introductory lesson. So there was some sort of miscommunication that that happened there. So this person showed up and I made an update so that people could read the update, which it says, hi, Flora, because I found out the woman's name was Flora. I spoke with my remote administrative staff. We did find your email chain. I see you did state your preferred day and time but had not officially enrolled at the school or paid for the lessons. For this reason, your daughter was never added to the schedule. I will give you a call today to talk now that I have your information. So you can see how I went in and I updated the review to say, hey, we actually, we care. We took some time to look into this situation and to a reader, now someone, I don't have to give them all the information, but if someone reads this, they're going to like, well, yeah, of course you didn't have a lesson, you didn't pay for it. That makes sense that. So it kind of negates the one star review. But the way this is handled, it is one, it shows that the owner really cares. Not only did this person get one response, they got two responses. Not only that, the owner is going to give them a call. She didn't answer. I did text her as well and she did respond to my text, didn't change her review, which is okay. Which is fine because the way I responded to the review kind of makes it look like, you know, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Most people, yeah, if you show up for a service, you have to pay for it. So it kind of negates the one star review. But it also shows how proactive the school is. And you know, we did something Wrong, let's fix it. And I reached out to this woman, I said, you know, I'm the owner. I really apologize. I'm so sorry that, you know, we, that we had this issue. We did find the email chain. I'm sorry that there were some confusion, you know, and I'm sorry that your daughter was upset. What I would like to do, because, you know, I know this isn't how our music school operates. I'd love to give you half off your first month lessons. This way you get your first lesson free, you'll get another lesson on us, and you'll get to take a full month of lessons and see what it's actually like to take music lessons with us.

She didn't want that, so that's okay. And this person seems to be someone, I looked at their profile, who tends to leave a lot of one star reviews at businesses. So again, that kind of tells you a little bit. I mean, she does leave some five star reviews too, but also tells you a little bit about the person being like, okay, this is someone who habitually leaves one star reviews. I don't, you know, I typically don't leave one star reviews on businesses unless there's like a complete health hazard. I think in my entire life I've left one one star review and I think it was two, you know, and I think it was for like a vet or something because I just thought it was like a really, really, really super bad experience. But in general, if I have a bad experience in a business, I usually tend not to trash the business online because, you know, as a business owner, I know that reviews like this actually impact a business a lot. So when you get a one star review like this, my recommendations are one look into it. What can you learn from it? We learned that there was a miscommunication. All right? We learned that, yes, the admin admin was talking to the client, but then didn't continue the follow up. So this person thought they had scheduled the lesson, but they never had because they never enrolled and they never paid for it. So there was a little bit of confusion on that end. And the administrator is like, that's 100% my fault. I was talking to this person and then her email must have got lost in a chain of emails. And we're like, okay, how do we fix this? Because that's not acceptable. We shouldn't be losing emails because now we've lost a sale. Right? This could have been a client. Maybe they weren't the greatest customer in the world. Just even based on Me reaching out and stuff. And maybe they weren't an ideal customer for us anyway, but there's a potential here that we could have lost out on a good customer. So what do we learn for that? So instead of blaming the customer, let's put the blame on ourselves and say, what can we do to improve our communication process? What can we do to, to improve our follow up process so this doesn't happen? And what we've done since is we have upgraded our system. We were just doing everything in Gmail and we've now upgraded our system so that everything is in Zendesk so that everyone can see every single ticket and nothing goes missed. If something is waiting on a response, it goes to pending. It just doesn't accidentally get deleted or moved because that's what happens. Someone accidentally moved the email into, you know, a completed inquiry folder and it wasn't, it wasn't completed. So we have a better customer service system now because of this review. So whenever you get a one star review, one always handle it professionally as an owner because it's going to reflect upon you in the business. You know, if someone goes, if I see one star reviews, I go and read them and I'm like, does this person sound like a total, you know, D bag or is this person, you know, being reasonable in the review can. And again, how did the owner respond? Was the owner's response brash? Was it harsh or was it supportive? In this case, hey, let me look into that. I'm going to give you a direct call. So the response shows that we do care. Even if the reviewer didn't change their review and left it as a one star, it's totally fine. It makes us look legitimate. We still have 4.9 out of 5, which is, which is a really, really good rating. But it makes us look a little bit more legitimate. So next time you get a one star review, don't get your panties up in a bunch. I know it's angry and I know you work so hard in your business to have someone come along and do something like this and ruin it for you, but take it with a grain of salt and then work hard to get more reviews. Like I'm gonna go, you know, not yell at my team, I'm gonna talk to my team and say, hey, this review got left six weeks ago. Can we get another positive review on here to get some more positive reviews piled on top of this one star review? Because if we can get this up to 80 reviews and we get seven more that are five stars, it kind of negates out that one star. So just because you get a one star review it's not the end of the world. Just work harder on getting more of those five star reviews and try really hard to make your customers happy. The ones you can make happy. Remember there's always going to be a percentage you will never be able to make happy but the ones you can make them super happy and then when they express their happiness and ask them if they'll leave a review and you'll be surprised. A lot of people are willing to help a business and I always tell them you know don't do it for me. Could you help your teacher? Could you help your teacher and go leave them a review. It really helps them, it helps the business if you enjoyed. We really appreciate a positive review and for the coming up next we can just do the best review or whatever they recommend in that box but that's that.

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