Looking on the Bright Side of Negative Reviews

Nothing quite hurts like a negative review. However, having your business receive one isn’t necessarily the end of the world. In fact, you can even use it to your advantage.

There are of course plenty of websites other than Yelp that allow customers to post feedback and reviews. However, almost all of them allow you, the business owner to reply either publicly or privately to reviews. For this reason, these tips for handling negative reviews apply to all business and review websites.

First of all, try sending a very carefully worded and diplomatic message of regret to the person who posted the negative review, apologizing for his less than stellar experience with your business. This won’t automatically guarantee that the user will retract his or her review, but you can always supplement this with a very polite and friendly public response that sets the facts straight, or can at least show others that you have resolved any shortcomings brought up in the review.

A single negative review isn’t really something you should really worry about. However, a series of bad reviews generally complaining about the same thing might be something of a wakeup call. If the reviews consistently point out similar flaws in your business, then you should look into it and make the necessary improvements.

Don’t take these negative reviews personally, but instead, look at them as ways to improve your business. Don’t start playing the blame game, and always remember to talk to your reviewers and customers in the most open, friendly, and diplomatic way possible.

Here are a few things you should probably know about negative reviews:

• A majority of the reviews on Yelp are pretty positive, with around 85% giving 3 stars or above. This also applies to all review sites across the Internet, with people most likely to share information about an experience or product that they had a good experience with.
• Negative reviews can actually make you look more genuine. These days, a lot of consumers  get suspicious when a business only has good reviews.  In fact, a restaurant with on Yelp that garnered a four-star rating from 20 reviews received three times more page views than a five-star rated restaurant with the same number of reviews.
• Negative reviews are scrutinized as well. In the same way that your potential customers scrutinize your business, they are also very discerning when it comes to the reviews they read. Most of them should be able to tell which reviews are helpful and which ones are just there to annoy.