Yelp! I Got a Bad Review! (Now What?)

When your business has an online presence, it's bound to happen. A customer is less than satisfied and leaves a one star awful review on your Facebook page, on Yelp, or on Google. Or someone leaves a negative comment on one of your business posts on Facebook or LinkedIn. It stings, right? You no longer focus on all the good reviews and the positive work you're doing. You can only sit back and focus on the negative. The CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, appeared on the Late show with Stephen Colbert a few years ago, where the host gave Stoppelman some feedback of his own. Now Yelp is 11 years old. Okay, what have you done to us by creating Yelp? All of us are critiquing each other all the time. Would you like to apologize? This week, Yelp, I got a bad review. Ratings and reviews have become a major source of information for consumers nowadays. Some reports have it as high as 90% of people consult reviews before they make a purchase. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do right in your work, someone will still leave a bad review. The value proposition for reviews allows anyone with a beef to leave a public review or a rating. And if the service are offering is bad or worse, not as advertised, people use the review as a means of getting back at that biz or at least send a very strong message. Now me, I never leave bad reviews. I don't know, maybe it's Catholic guilt or bad juju, I don't know. Unless it's deserved. Now stay tuned for an excerpt from a review that I left on TripAdvisor for a resort that I stayed at. This past February I was celebrating a big mutual birthday with a ton of my girlfriends and we all went down to this resort in Costa Rica and a number of us ended up getting sick with the norovirus. Now, I have a history of avoiding the norovirus because back in the day when I worked for the cruise line industry out of Washington D.C. i was there when the norovirus first hit cruise ships. And I learned directly from the CDC because I asked, how do you prevent yourself from getting the norovirus? And I took all the lessons that they gave me and knock on wood, I said I never wanted to get sick again and I never did. It was a mix of probiotics and acidophilus. And the advice worked because I have never been sick with the norovirus or the stomach flu until February. Here was the title of my review on TripAdvisor, the Fyre Festival of Resorts. Do you see where this is headed here's part of my review Food the best news you will lose weight, close down your Weight Watchers app and keep your Beginner's guide to the Keto diet book at home. This resort offers a special brat diet to 80% of the guests who are expected to contract the norovirus. I love the daily, daily Howler monkey visits to our patio deck. When I was confined to bed for the entire second day of my trip due to illness, I received periodic visits from the primate guests. At first the visits were cute, but sickness induced dreams or were they hallucinations created a weird role reversal with them parading by watching me through the glass as I tried to sleep. Now if only that howler brought a ginger ale or an extra roll of toilet paper, you'd be reading a five rating review and so on and so on. And did I share that link from the resort? Yes. And did other people write back to me to tell me that they also got sick or they knew someone that got sick at that same resort at the same time? Yes, because that's how it works. Usually people don't like to give bad reviews just for the sake of getting bad reviews, though it does happen, but it's when they feel wrong, or if they feel the service was particularly bad, or if there is some massive disconnect between the business and the customer. So in my case, again, I never lead bad reviews. Ever. But in this case it was a hotel, it was resort where we spent good money to relax and boy did I need a relaxing trip. And it was clear that there was a sickness running through the resort. So what can you do when you get a bad review, whether it's deserved or not? I'm not in the business of online reviews yet. As a public relations practitioner, it comes up a lot. In my line of work, humans love to give reviews. When someone asks you a question about a movie or a restaurant, think about how you would typically answer. You don't answer with a yes or a no and end it there. You say I love the restaurant. Make sure you try the fish tacos. Or yes, I saw that movie and I would like my two hours back please. That's how I felt about the Great Gatsby. I had to watch that last night with my daughter for an anglus assignment with Leo and Toby McGuire. It really wasn't that good. See two bad reviews in one podcast and I haven't really even started yet. Anyway, I know a lot of you who are listening have businesses or establishments with a digital footprint of some sort right now. Where People can leave a review about the service that you provide, and people will ask me, how can you game a review? In short, you can't. There are paid programs out there that will help you sort through reviews or perhaps generate more positive reviews and where you can vet out the negative reviews or at least be able to respond to them. But for the most part, people have to spend time running their business, and they can't really worry about spending time managing their reviews. But reviews are incredibly important. But a bad review, a negative review, especially a spiteful review, can do a lot of damage to a business. And I saw how this happened firsthand. But it started secondhand. About a year ago, I was on Facebook and I noticed that a teacher friend of mine had shared a post from a woman in the next town over. And she was ranting. She was angry. There was an event in this town, it's a beachside town, and there was a swim event, or swim and running event for. For disabled participants and athletes. And she was livid and appalled because the neighboring hotel had kicked out a woman competitor with her mom from that hotel because she was disabled. She said the owner was rude and unaccommodating to the pair. Now, this woman worked at the next door hotel, and she had no problem admitting that on the post, but she wanted to make sure that everyone saw this bad review, and she wanted everyone to share the horrible thing that this hotel and that business owner had done to that woman, that disabled swimmer and her mother. Now, I knew this spelled trouble for the owner as soon as I saw it. And in my line of biz, I also knew that there was another side to that story. There had to be. Now, in the post, she encouraged people to give negative reviews wherever they could. She pointed them out to Google and Facebook, Facebook and Yelp. And I noticed and I watched it. But then a week later, I went on a run. And I remember it was in the spring, because I was in spring running shape, which is much different than summer running shape. But as I was running, I recognized the hotel, which I guess technically was a motel because the doors were facing outside, they weren't enclosed, but that's neither here nor there. But when I recognized it, I thought, I have to walk in there and I have to find out what. What happened with this review, if it impacted the business in any way. So I walked in and I saw at the desk exactly who I needed to speak with. And it was the owner. And he looked, as described on the Facebook post, you know, that he was a little out of touch. And kind of the surly sort. And he seemed that. And as I came up, I introduced myself and I started to ask him about that review. And I could see his face turn like, who is this woman, woman? And why is she asking me this? And I knew I was probably fit the profile of a friend of a friend of the woman that posted it. So I can see his reluctance then. And I stopped and I explained who I was and why I was sweating profusely and said that I just happened to be running by. And I saw the Facebook post and I also told him, this is what I do for business. I help businesses protect themselves when something like this happens. Well, that turned him, and I could tell it calmed him a little and he started to trust me. And I asked him what happened and could you tell me the other side of the story? Because I know that there is another side of the story. And he explained to me exactly what I suspected, that it was a safety issue, that there was some problem with the room that they were staying in. But this business owner lived in a world where online reviews meant absolutely nothing to him. And I could tell by his attitude he was annoyed. He was completely put out. And when I had explained to him what had happened and how it was being shared, he said, you know what, I've been in business for 50 years. These things have a way of blowing over. And I said, with all due respect, they don't anymore. Now what do you think happened to this business? Do you think that they are still in business or it impacted their business? Well, they are still in business and I suspect it's because they likely paid off the mortgage 50 years ago, so they don't have to worry about being in business or not. However, if you were to look at this hotel motel online and look at the reviews, they are bad. It's an average. Instead of a five star review, they average a three star review. Their Facebook reviews are still bad. The Yelp reviews, the Google reviews, in fact, there was a review on the post on Google, I believe. That said, I was surprised the ratings were so low for this place. The view here is lovely. So there's that. Why is the subject of online reviews important? Because one bad review or a bad word of mouth review that I just mentioned that had happened on Facebook to that hotel can send your business spiraling. Now, a year ago, two years ago, when a client would ask me, what do we do when we get all these horrible reviews on Facebook? Can we just turn them off? I would say, yeah, if you don't care about reviews, it's okay if you're having a problem, like if they were being attacked by activists or a bunch of consumers or customers that wanted to bring them down for another reason that had nothing to do with the business. But now I completely changed that thought and I'm on the opposite side of it. You don't want to turn off your reviews ever, because reviews offer you SEO. Just search engine optimization for one, but two reviews also offer a business the opportunity to defend themselves, or to speak up for themselves, or to right a wrong review. So that's going to be my first step here for everyone. As you're listening. So this episode is about the reviews, why you don't want to get rid of them, and why you want to look at them as gold. Because what they do is they offer a lot of information. So on today's episode of the Confident Communications podcast, we're going to talk talk about what to do when you feel attacked online and how you can stay on your customer's good side or find your way back there. Because the truth is, while people are very quick to judge you harshly, if you're meeting their expectations, many of them will also sing your praises. You can't make everyone happy all the time, but you just have to follow your gut and your ideas to know what's right. And they will in turn say very positive things about you. So what do you do when you have these bad reviews? Well, staying off the Internet does not help. It just allows your customers the opportunity to have a conversation about you without you in the conversation. And ignoring or deleting the negative reviews and comments is just as damaging as in going on the defensive in an effort to prove that you did nothing wrong. Don't do it. There are a lot of guidelines within Yelp and Google and TripAdvisor and now Facebook, where you can report inappropriate reviews or reviews that are way out of context or if someone is trying to malign you inappropriately online. But this episode is going to be about the day to day reviews. You're running a business, you're managing a business and online reviews are important. You don't have extra programs to help you. You don't have a staff managing it. It's usually just you and some of your helpers that are responsible for managing these online reviews. So this is a quick guide for how you can manage them. Here we go. Number one, acknowledge the issue. Your customer needs to know that they are heard, that you understand the complaint and you plan to do something about it. Acknowledging the issue by responding to the complaint in the public eye. That is rule number one. You want to mirror the complaint so that they know that they've been heard. I understand that you were unhappy about X. We're glad you let us know that this product didn't work here and this is what we're going to do about it. Now here is an additional tip. Do not write a blanket statement that you copy and paste and use on multiple reviews. I've seen this done a number of times. Remember the TripAdvisor review that I had left about the resort in Costa Rica? The manager got back to me, but he got back to me on Trip Advisor with the exact same response that he copied and paste on every other complaint about the resort where people were complaining that they were sick. Remember my guy that was in the beachside hotel when they finally figured out the reviews, which they did, they replied to them. They did the same thing. The copy and paste. The copy and paste people are pretty savvy to that. Now I think the copy and paste is worse than leaving no review at all. Take the time. Remember, acknowledge the issue, but customize that issue to the problem. Number two Express empathy. Empathy and sympathy are two very different feelings. Don't express sorrow or pity about the complaint. You do not want to use the word sorry and ladies, I'm speaking to you. Sorry implies guilt. Sorry says you did something wrong, but you do want to show empathy that you care that something happened. The person leaving the complaint or the review wants to know that you understand. Put yourself in your customer shoes. We know how frustrating it is when something doesn't work as expected, or we know that a high return on investment is important to our customers. Are both appropriate responses that show you understand how the customer feels. I use that a lot in a lot of my talks and workshops and whenever I speak to people, especially about that customer experience. The first feeling you should have is the feeling of yourself standing in the shoes of your customer and let that be your guide. Number three Keep your professionalism in check. No good has ever come from a heated debate, especially one conducted via written the Word online or on social media. Know that anything you put online can and likely will be shared with the world, even if you sent it via email or private text message. Instead, think about how you would react to an unhappy customer who is standing right in front of you. If someone took the time to come to you in person to complain about a product or service, you would not walk away from them. You wouldn't start yelling at them and telling them that they were wrong, you'd be direct and you would respond in a calm, cool and collected manner. You want to do the same thing online. I'm sure many of you have seen the responses from business owners where they go off on people that leave negative reviews. Just Google wedding planners or bakeries or restaurants. There are plenty of examples of the owner taking something personally. Remember, a lot of people writing these reviews nowadays are part of a generation where they don't necessarily think that there's a human behind it. Sometimes. Sometimes they just want to get it off their chest and not have to deal with it anymore. They're not thinking about the person behind the computer screen. So if that does happen to you and you feel your blood start to rise, have someone else do the review or just walk away and come back later and respond as a professional. Number four, what should you do with a bad review? Well, this one is important because I use this line a lot in my work because I deal with crisis management, right? And if someone has a problem that affects their industry or affects their business, any crisis, any problem, any hiccup is an opportunity to fix it publicly. So sometimes there can be a lot of benefit to showing the customer what you do when things go wrong as opposed to when they go right. So it may be hard to spot it when it first happens, but a bad review is an excellent opportunity for you to change an update, adjust, and then eventually prosper. Or you could keep things the same, but you can show some empathy and tell the customer that you care and that you appreciate the review and the feedback and that you hope that they come back to your business again. Number five don't admit fault. A lot of factors go into the success or failure of a product or service, and while it may or may not be the fault of you or your organization, don't admit to it. That doesn't serve anyone any good because at this point it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. Instead, come at it from the angle of how you're going to fix the issue so the customer is satisfied. Let's find a way to make this right. We want to make sure you are satisfied with your purchase. Are all good options. I wrote a blog post on LinkedIn or I should say it's not blog post, but I published an article on LinkedIn a couple months ago and it was about online reviews and that's how I was inspired to write this episode. And someone wrote back to me and said who was in the utility business? And wrote back and said I completely disagree with what you're saying that you shouldn't admit fault if a customer is wrong. I completely disagree with that. You know, they need to know that they're wrong. And I wrote back and gave my feedback, I guess my review as well, which is, well, imagine it if you were in a restaurant. Let's just start there. You don't want to admit that there was a problem with something like, I think this food is disgusting. You're right, it was disgusting. No, what the customer wants, what the diner wants at that moment, they just want it fixed. And many other businesses are the same way. They just want it fixed or they want to be heard. So don't go out of your way to tell them that they're wrong. It doesn't serve anyone well. Number six, this ties into number five, but offer a solution. A customer complains or posts a negative review because they're not satisfied something in their experience went sour or sideways. And not only do they want you to know about it, they want a solution and they want it now. This is your opportunity to make things right as a business owner, whether it's replacing a product, offering a repair, or adjusting your services to satisfy that customer. Find a solution that gives them what they want without disrupting your own terms of service. This is kind of the Nordstrom's way of doing things. Like, I know when I'm dealing with Nordstrom's, I know that I can go back with any type of issue because they always give me such good customer service that even if I can't return an outfit because I've lost the tag and the receipt, I know they're going to help me make it right. Number seven, respond publicly. A public complaint always calls for a public response. When you take the conversation behind closed doors, you lose the opportunity to make a public statement. I just came back from a training this week, and during the training, we were talking about online reviews. And as people were raising their hands and giving me their stories of what they did with online reviews, these were pretty smart people that knew how to do a job and how to do a job well. But they took, I would say, a little bit of professional pride in telling the room how they handled with these online detractors, these complainers. And most of them would say, well, I took it offline, we dealt with it, and then they ended up really, really happy. And then the problem was solved. That's a good solution, but it's not the right solution for the modern age. The best solution is if you solve a problem, but then you solve it for everyone to see. You don't want to solve it one to one because that complainer did not make it a one to one complaint. It was a mass complaint. In other words, they communicated it to the masses, so everyone saw it. If you don't reply back to the masses, everyone's going to assume that you didn't do anything or you dropped the ball. You want to go point for point. They complain by the masses, you respond as well. But then bring it down to a point where you hit the privacy wall. And once you can no longer discuss it publicly online is when you write, we will take this matter offline or because we're now dealing with private information, I will reach out or please contact us so we can resolve this privately. You know, whatever the case is, but bring it as far as you can publicly. According to a study by Lithium Media and I have this link in the show notes, 72% of customers expect brands to respond to complaints on Twitter within an hour. And if you don't respond, 60% will take further action, whether that's going to Facebook with the complaint or writing a bad review. Now, I think this statistic is true from my personal experience. As I mentioned before, I don't like to leave a lot of online reviews, but I expect customer service to give me customer service. And I get very annoyed when I get stuck on hold on the phone. And this happens when I'm trying to deal with something with an airline or if I'm trying to deal with something with my cell phone service, for example, I could be on hold in some cases for hours. What I do usually when I'm on hold is I'll go straight to Twitter and I will tweet customer service. Twitter customer service is still, I consider a hack because you got a lot of people, and most likely they're younger, that are sitting there monitoring that screen. And the majority of customers have no idea that this is even an option. They're still using the phone or sending emails or they're in chat rooms. Use Twitter where you can because you will get a response. I usually get a response on Twitter with any company I've ever asked within the hour. So rather than look at a bad review or a public complaint as a negative, look at it as a way for you to learn and grow your business, or at least your customer relations skills. You've given the gift of receiving direct feedback about a product, service or process that needs to be adjusted so you can please more customers down the road. So while it may sting to read it, the review truly is a way to learn and to thrive in your business. It's hard to read something negative about a service or a product that you've literally poured your blood, sweat, and tears into. But the most important thing to do is to respond appropriately so that one bad review doesn't explode into a virtual fight between you and the reviewer. While that might make for entertaining reading for your competition, it's no way to run a successful business or maintain your credibility. So instead, take a deep breath and heed this advice. If you ignore them, then they cannot grow and go bad. All right, and the last tip, and this is a biggie. Do not delete the complaint or the attack, especially if you have access to doing that. So doing so only opens the door for accusations of you hiding something. Instead, respond and do it with these tips in mind. Remember, Be professional. It doesn't matter if the attack you're feeling is warranted or not. You need to be the bigger person and be professional. Think about people who haven't responded professionally during a public attack. You look down on them. They seem irrational. So be professional. No matter what, acknowledge that there's an issue. Again, whether you feel the attack is warranted or not acknowledging that there's an issue. If one person or group is being critical, chances are that others feel the same way. Next, Empathize. Don't apologize. People want to know that they're seen and that they're heard. So don't feel sorry for the person attacking you or apologize to the person. Be empathetic and tell them that you feel the pain that they're going through. Remember, put yourself in the customer's shoes. Next, don't admit fault. Legally speaking, you don't want to admit any fault. You never know when a post is going to creep up. Again, even if a product or service didn't work as expected, it's not going to serve anyone well. If you admit fault, you can admit that things happened, but not fault. So again, people just want to be seen and heard, and they want a solution that's more important to them than you admitting that you were wrong. Next, offer solutions. Someone will complain about you publicly because they want to be seen and heard, and they want you to solve their problem. So any response to this complaint should offer a solution or a vehicle to find that solution. Next, respond publicly. If you're feeling attacked online, chances are the attack happened publicly, so any and all communication, with a few exceptions, should also be done publicly. So remember, in the world of online reviews, with any and all communication, with very few exceptions, they should all be done publicly because others need to know that you are aware of that complaint, you're aware of the problem, and you hear what people have to say about it. The only conversations that should happen privately are those that discuss refunds, deliverables, or sharing private information or sensitive information. Remember, make it as public as you can until you hit that privacy wall and then you take it offline. A bad review can reflect negatively on your brand and business, but when you handle it correctly, it's a way for you to grow as a business. It's also a great learning experience to help you tighten up those policies so you can avoid challenges in the future. All right, there's the list. It was a long one, but an important one. But let's say you're driving right now and you don't remember anything on that list. Just remember this, you don't want to dismiss or ignore any online review. Remember that they are your customer and you want them to remain that way. If you ignore them, you'll likely lose them and they'll likely bring others along with them. Now, at this point in the podcast, if you've listened to all of that information and you're thinking, sheesh, I feel like that motel owner from the beachside hotel. I don't know what I'm doing on online media. I have a guide for you that you can grab by Texting me at 345345 and type the word rookie R O O K I E into your phone. So that's text 345345 and type the word rookie into your phone and then you'll receive a link to Download the top 5 rookie mistakes professionals make online. Speaking of reviews, what an excellent opportunity for me to ask for you to leave a review about my podcast Confident Communications. How do you do it? Well, believe it or not, it's not easy. Stitcher allows you to do it easy enough online as do other podcast reviews. But Apple itunes, that's the biggie. You can leave a review on the itunes app on your phone. So just look up the show Confident Communications and if you scroll down to the bottom you will see the stars and the reviews that I currently have in the five star rating review that I have and can leave your review and your rating. So I encourage you to do so. Thanks again for listening. For more tips, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple, itunes, Stitcher or wherever you listen to your podcast. Remember, I want to help you become a modern age communicator in your industry and help you build a crisis proof reputation for you and your business. Bye for now, Sam.