Bad Customer Reviews And What You Can Do About Them

I was look­ing up car­pet com­pa­nies on my iPhone a week or two ago and came across the pho­to on this blog post (Click to enlarge). I was look­ing for a car­pet com­pa­ny by my home and clicked on this one com­pa­nies’ only review they had on Google Places. It was a 1 star review. I’ve only showed you a sam­ple of the review. You can tell that it is not pret­ty! The cus­tomer was any­thing but hap­py. I feel sor­ry for this car­pet busi­ness but not sor­ry enough to try him out. He prob­a­bly isn’t as bad as the review­er said. So why did I not use him? Because he has a pret­ty bad review and he nev­er did any­thing about it. I was in a hur­ry to find a rep­utable com­pa­ny I can trust, and not babysit. Because of that 1 star review and my sit­u­a­tion, I went else­where. So, what could this own­er do about this review and those in the future, and what can you do to pro­tect your online rep­u­ta­tion? The New Web Has Changed Everything Mar­keters today are call­ing all these social media sites, blogs, videos and so on, ​“The New Web.” The New Web (TNW) can be a win win for both the con­sumer and the busi­ness own­er. The con­sumer loves TNW because he (or she) can express him­self. He can rant. He can rave. He can tell the world whether he likes some­thing or hates it with a vengeance. It takes only sec­onds to post things online. It takes only mil­lisec­onds now to do web search­es. It takes no time at all before a user’s friends and the rest of the web to dis­cov­er the pros and cons of a con­sumer’s expe­ri­ence. The New Web is hear to stay and busi­ness­es can make this a win for them too. It takes very lit­tle time to do one sim­ple thing: Engage. Engage with Your Cus­tomers On and Offline The qual­i­ty con­trac­tors I know tend to respect their cus­tomers pri­va­cy, which is a good thing. How­ev­er, I think many of them tend to be a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ed by their clients and don’t feel they can engage with them dur­ing and after the job. I think it should be the oppo­site. I’ve grown up my whole life in the trades, watch­ing my dad run his awe­some paint­ing busi­ness. I know many of his clients on a first name basis. I’ve been to their house, been invit­ed to par­ties, even gone out to lunch with some of them. Now that I’m on the east coast, I still have con­tact with some of my dad’s clients. These folks are wealthy and busy peo­ple, yet they still have time to talk with their con­trac­tor. Why? Because I was not afraid of them. I stay con­nect­ed to them, and my dad has done that with them for years. Once you get to know your clients, and serve them well, they should be a cus­tomer for life. If you have a bump in the road dur­ing the job, do the right thing and fix it. In the end, engage with your cus­tomers and make sure they will give you a big ​“hug” when you leave the job. By engag­ing with clients on a per­son­al lev­el, you will avoid most nasty online reviews. BUT what hap­pens when you do get a bad one? Respond Respond To The Review When a cus­tomer or prospect is upset about some­thing, and they know how to use The New Web com­fort­ably, they’ll prob­a­bly vent by writ­ing a bad review. Don’t sweat this all too much. Most web­sites like Ang­ie’s List, Kudzu, Yelp and Google allow busi­ness own­ers to respond pub­licly to reviews, espe­cial­ly neg­a­tive ones. This is your oppor­tu­ni­ty to write a nice and sim­ple, not con­fronta­tion­al, response. If you respond and act pro­fes­sion­al, most web users that will stum­ble upon your review will make note that you, the busi­ness own­er, respond­ed well to the review/​complaint. That goes a long way. The big­ger, more well-known com­pa­nies, will usu­al­ly get hit the hard­est: plumber, roofers and HVAC com­pa­nies. These trades live by their online rep­u­ta­tion and have to respond to the reviews.  Respond­ing online means you need to bud­get time each week to take a peek online about what peo­ple are say­ing about you. One way is to sign up for Google Alerts. You can be noti­fied when your name appears online by email or text message.  Maybe this post was noth­ing new to you. If it was, go out and pro­tect your online rep­u­ta­tion and start engag­ing with your cus­tomers. They love you…and make them a cus­tomer for life. Do you cur­rent­ly respond to reviews online? How do you engage with your clients? Love to hear your thoughts on this subject.