fired employee BASHED ME online!!!

That type of response, I could care less about whoever wrote the review. I could care less about what they think.

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 85 locations around North America and at one of those locations in the past week we had someone that was fired and they went ahead and left us a Google review that was scathing and one star. But not only did they leave a review, they made sure that they got their family members involved and their relatives to, to also leave one star reviews for the company. When I got this, because I got notified every single time a one star review comes across, any location in North America, I get an email. So this specific location, I actually own this one because I own three locations. One on the east coast, one little more in the center of the US and then I'm obviously in Washington state where we have our first location. So I own three of them. The other 85 are franchised. What's important to know here is that your response to that online interview is extremely, extremely important. Because a lot of times we look at very negative, we see that one star review, our heart drops, we feel sick to our stomach and immediately we want to lash out because this is in this case, we didn't do anything wrong and we literally just fired someone and now they're lashing back online and trying to tear the company down. Now the emotional response to this is absolutely warranted. Like I get it, you feel immediately mad. But you have to realize this is one of the best opportunities for your business. Why? Because that's where people are actually going to look is the one star reviews. And then they're going to look how you responded. Now think of it. You were looking to go to a mechanic or to a restaurant or any sort of service based business and you were trying to determine whether or not you should go based upon the online reviews. Now if there's a thousand five star reviews and two one star reviews and you have two minutes to determine whether or not you're going to go to this business, what are you going to do? You're going to read the two one star reviews. So in my opinion this is a great opportunity. Whenever someone leaves, a one star review in your business is a massive opportunity. Let's go through some of the scenarios. We're going to get to the one about the employees in just a second. First and foremost, you did a bad job and you really bad job and the person's literally venting and they're telling all the true facts of what happened. And in this case, you are going to take the high road. You are going to make sure that in your response to this customer's one star review, you outline the fact that you tried to rectify it. You might went back to their house three or four times, you fixed it, maybe you gave them their money back, that's important. That's the one time that we will get money back is when we are actually wrong. We did something, we made a mistake. Maybe you gave them our money back and make that clear in the review that you tried to make it right, you did make it right and you gave the money back for the service. So if you're actually wrong, just admit it, don't try to cover it up. Just be completely honest and say we messed up, we very much applied apologize and be open and transparent. So that's the first kind of one star horrible review that can come across. The next one star review from a customer could be just that they are out of their tree.

And this customer is just so hard to deal with. And you tried to make them happy, but they still like they do not see this as being rectified. Even if you gave them their money back, they wouldn't be happy. And whether or not you gave them money back or not doesn't solve the problem here. It's just there's mad, there's looking for an opportunity to leave a one star review. And if you look on their reviews that they left in the past, for every other business, it's one star reviews. Now this type of person, you just have to again be very, very professional. Because most customers when they look at one star reviews, they kind of have a brain too. And if this person's out of their tree and cussing at you and saying all sorts of horrible things about your business and you respond in a very professional way, this could be an actual real positive for your business and a good look. If someone is potentially looking to use your product or services, so someone's just freaking out, you're going to come very professional, you're going to state facts, you're not going to project any sort of opinion about them, their character, how they treated you. Do not become the victim. Allow yourself to be, remain the consummate professional in the relationship. Because anyone that's reading this, the only thing I care about one star reviews is a person that's going to read the review. And guess what? People will read those one star reviews most often. Therefore, I need to make sure that my response is the type of thing that when someone reads it they might say, okay, they made a mistake, but they apologized. Okay, now here, there might have been a misunderstanding, but this customer thinks they're the worst thing since sliced bread. And the way that the company handled this and responded was, was excellent. Now this case where we have an employee that's writing a one star review, what is the inclination and possibly even potentially the right thing to do is just tell the honest truth in your response and then say, hey, look, this is a disgruntled employee that was fired and is simply lashing back out of the business. Now you could do that. But what the problem with this is, then it still adds some validity to their argument. But in my mind, the best way to handle this type of review is simply say as the response that you did not service their property, that you did not give your product or service to them. Because at the end of the day, that's all that happened. They were trying to feign as someone that was a customer. They had never gotten service from us. Therefore, I'm simply going to respond back with a response that says, look, we've never serviced your property. If we have, please contact us. We'd love to make it right. We don't like customers to be disappointed and we'd love to make that right with you. So give us a call, give them your contact information. Now, you might know that it's your employee or potentially a customer that hates your guts, or a competitor or something like that. But instead of being triggered by that, realize that customers are going to be going there first and your response to that is going to be tremendous. And if you literally say, like, this is random, you know, sometimes random. Sally Pants 49 or Cherry. Cherry Picker 36 is the name of the username that's leaving a review and you have no idea who it is. And if they're not willing to have the guts to put their name on the review, I am going to use that response. And that is, look, we've never done service for you. We have no record of you inside of our system. We've looked up your property name and we cannot find you. If we have let you down and we've done service, please reach out to us. Here's our contact information. We do not want customers to be unhappy and we want to make it right if we've done something wrong. That type of response, I could care less about whoever wrote the review. I could care less about what they think. I'm caring about the other hundred thousand people. They're going to read that review and then my response to it and then make a judgment as to whether or not they want to do business with my company. Remaining professional, telling the truth, admitting fault when you actually did make a failure, and proving to the rest of customers that when you do something wrong, you're going to make it right. And then for everyone else, for everyone that you did not do service for, that is lying, is trying to just tear your company down. And they're a competitor, a past employee, or some random person, you have no idea who they are. Some simply reply back saying, hey, if we did mess up, please contact us. But we have no record of doing service for you inside of our system. Based upon your name and your ad and name and your contact information provided here, we cannot find you in our system. In my opinion, that's the best way to handle it. If you'd like to watch a very mad customer talking to someone at our office, click this video here. And this person was freaking out and mad. However, it didn't really make sense because although they never wanted us to come back on their property, they wanted us to come back next week and mow the lawn. It was crazy. And this is from last year. Check this video out here right now.