How to Avoid Negative Reviews

Getting negative reviews from customers is no one’s joy in business, but that doesn’t mean you should delete them or not allow customers to leave a review at all – see my other post about why you should embrace negative reviews. So negative reviews aren’t the end of the world however, they aren’t the goal either so how can you avoid negative reviews on your social media business profiles?

EDUCTAE, IDENTIFY, AND LISTEN

Educate people about your products

Providing valuable information and details about your product is key to setting your customers expectations of your products. Ensure to tell your customers about the key challenges they may face when using your product and offer helpful advice on how to overcome them. Also, make sure the customer is aware of how and when the product will reach them. Educating your customers in this way will let them know what to expect and will reduce their initial urge to post a negative review as soon as something doesn’t go the way the customer expects.

Identify the people most likely to share opinions

Who is it in your market that like to leave reviews? What age are they? What tends to be their situations in life, are they married? With children? Where do they live? What language do they speak? Knowing these types of questions helps to put the reviews in perspective and can highlight the market you seem to be reaching most.

Listen and respond to supporters, detractors and neutrals

The first step is to know where opinions are shared, create a list of the places you know people leave reviews. It might be your website, Facebook, Instagram, Product Review, etc. Knowing where opinions are shared lets you know the platforms you need to manage. Then it is important to respond to each review as it is a helpful way to position your brand as a listener and one that cares about what customers have to say.

Educating, identifying and listening to customers are the three things you can do to manage negative reviews and reduce the number of them.