Unfortunately, no matter how outstanding your products might be, bad reviews are a fact of life for just about every business. You need to be prepared!

Here are five tips to help you minimize the impact of bad online reviews!

1. Sympathize with the customer’s concerns

When customers decide to write bad review, they are probably dealing with a situation they find extremely frustrating and they want to vent their aggravation. While responding, make sure customers feel heard and understood.  Show them that their opinion is important to you, and that you are truly sorry to hear that they had a negative experience, and that you are willing to do your best to solve the problem.

2. Don’t mention your business name in your response

Every time you use your business name in your responses, it increases the chances that these responses are going to be visible in the search engine results consumers receive when they are looking for your type of business online.  If you are thanking a customer for a good review, this could have a very positive impact. For negative reviews, however, the impact is reversed and you are actually making the damage worse.  You obviously don’t want to increases the chances that your potential customers will see your negative reviews before they see a good review.

3. Keep it short

In case of bad experiences it is better not to focus too much on the details of what happened in public. The response should address the problem in few sentences and focus more on solutions to a customer’s problem.

4. Keep it private after the first response.

One of the best things you can do when responding to a bad review, is to offer to customers a way to solve their problem privately. It’s best to have one of your customer service representatives or office managers contact the customer directly to address the matter. If done properly, this will show that you care about your customers’ opinions, and it will also prevent any further complaints from being discussed online.

5. Don’t forget the power of persuasion.

While writing your response, try to emphasize the fact that this bad experience is an exception and that it doesn’t reflect the experiences of most customers. That will reassure prospective customers      that  their experience with your business is likely to be a good one.

Thanks for reading! We hope you enjoyed this article. For more digital marketing tips, like us on Facebook and feel free to comment. We’d love to hear from you. Contact us here

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Charisse Older

Position:

Director of Sales & Marketing

Where are you from originally?

Born in Oxnard

Grew up in Burbank

When did you start working at the Chamber?

February 2013

What were you doing before you started working at the Chamber?

13+ years in upscale restaurants. 10+ years with Morton’s The Steakhouse & 3 years with The Capital Grille.

Favorite thing about your job:

Being able to work with and continually meet very dynamic leaders from so many different industries and backgrounds.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

My other “job” is with Rotary which fills my personal passion of serving others. For fun I love to travel, eat & drink, run, hike, ride bikes (both pedal and the type with an engine), cook, strategize, spend quality time with family and friends.

One piece of advice for Chamber members:

“Be authentic”…something well said by our Board Member Charles Black. Many people join the chamber to network however those who approach the chamber by building authentic connections tend to find even more value in their membership.

What are the best and worst things about living in LA?

Best: amazing restaurants, people and entertainment options. Worst: Traffic and pretentious people who give LA a bad name.

Three bucket list items:

• Visit every continent
• Complete a triathlon
• Ride a motorcycle across Europe

What is one thing you wish you could tell your fifteen year old self:

Study abroad

If you could have one superhuman power, what would it be?

Fly

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Marine biologist

To get in touch with Charisse and the rest of the Chamber staff, please click here. 

The post Meet the Chamber Staff: Charisse Older appeared first on Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce.