Phil Risher breaks down how businesses respond to bad online reviews. Ignore it and prospects think you don't care. Reply aggressively and they assume you'll treat them badly too. A polite apology and offer to fix it converts the angry reviewer into a lead and lowers your cost per customer.
Yeah, but when you get bad reviews and you don't respond, it doesn't just hurt your reputation, it actually hurts your cost per lead. What happens when people are doing their research is that they go to Google, they go to your reviews, and they look at the lowest review, and then they read the reviews. If you do not respond to the review, instantly lost the lead. They're gonna say, wow, well, if something goes wrong with my situation, this company doesn't even care enough to respond. Second, if you respond and you sound crazy about you're gonna hunt them down and do all this crazy stuff, that tells them, well, if something happens bad on my job, they're gonna treat me as if I don't know what I'm talking about and they're gonna blow me up online. I don't want that experience, go somewhere else. If you respond pleasantly and say, "Hey, I'm so sorry that happened to you. Give us a call and let us take care of this. We take customer service very seriously." That shows any prospective person, wow, this person cares, they wanna do the right thing. That helps you secure the lead and will show that, okay, they actually care about customer service. In the long run, responding to 1-star reviews, making sure that you don't get 1-star reviews is going to help you get more leads, which is gonna drive down your cost.
