How Should Contractors Respond To Poor Reviews?

We’ve all been there… The dread­ed 1‑star review.

The bad review now and then is inevitable. Frus­trat­ing, but inevitable. I’ve helped con­trac­tors deal with them on many occa­sions, often talk­ing them down from writ­ing some­thing emo­tion­al and reac­tive, rather than cal­cu­lat­ed and considered. 

Here’s my rec­om­mend­ed approach:

1. Take a deep breath. The client could be com­plete­ly wrong, or maybe they aren’t and there’s some­thing you need to deal with inter­nal­ly. Either way, take a minute.

2. Look into it. Ask your team what hap­pened before respond­ing to get a bet­ter sense of all the fac­tors at play. 

3. Reach out. Can you con­tact the upset cus­tomer direct­ly and make things right? If so, awe­some. If not, con­tin­ue on to Step 4. 

4. Write a pro­fes­sion­al reply. I know how tempt­ing it is to lay it all out there, espe­cial­ly if you’re deal­ing with a total­ly unrea­son­able client. But here’s the thing: your response should be writ­ten with oth­er prospects in mind. Peo­ple who will be perus­ing these reviews while con­sid­er­ing your ser­vices. Take the high ground, be calm, and explain the sit­u­a­tion in broad terms (nobody wants to read a nov­el about what hap­pened), invit­ing the per­son to reach out to you direct­ly. This posi­tions you as the more rea­son­able per­son in the situation.

The per­fect response to a poor Google review

I have to give a shout-out here to Frank, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er at Chism Broth­ers Paint­ing. After receiv­ing a frus­trat­ing review, Frank fol­lowed the steps above perfectly. 

1. Frank looked into the sit­u­a­tion and what hap­pened. It turns out that there was an under­ly­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion issue: a mix­up with the appoint­ment time and home address caused the esti­ma­tor to miss the appoint­ment. Rather than com­mu­ni­cate, the home­own­er decid­ed to vent on Google. 

2. Next, Frank picked up the phone and called the home­own­er direct­ly. He didn’t make excus­es or jus­ti­fy any­thing, but took full respon­si­bil­i­ty and apol­o­gized. The con­ver­sa­tion went very well — it’s amaz­ing how peo­ple change their tone when they’re talk­ing with you direct­ly. Frank deesca­lat­ed the situation. 

3. After the call, we craft­ed a response for those future read­ers too. See below…

   

   
   

This approach requires patience and time, but it pays off in the end. Will every sit­u­a­tion turn out well? No, but at least you know that you hon­est­ly did what you could. Any­thing else is out­side of your con­trol, and you can only choose your response.