It is a fact that prospective buyers are increasingly relying on the Internet for making purchases. If they find any online negative reviews about your brand or products, they will surely turn to your competitors. Even a single casual bad remark – if shared by a large number of consumers – can lead to shrinking of your customer base and plummeting of sales.
The only way to avert such a situation is for you to effectively manage your online reputation and particularly ensure no adverse comments appear prominently on the internet.
Generally, bad reviews are made by disgruntled customers. Your job is to ensure that you contact the concerned customers, ascertain his/her cause for dissatisfaction and offer proper remedy and pacify the customer. Any attempt on your part to ignore adverse criticisms can have far-reaching consequences.
There are occasions when negative reviews are posted by an embittered ex-employee or a zealous but unethical competitor disguised as a disgruntled consumer. The unfortunate aspect is review sites permit people to write reviews anonymously.
Never retaliate with an aggressive or offensive response as that will only make matters worse. Asking the review site to remove the comment will not be effective and it will only heighten your anger and frustration.
If you opt to respond to negative feedback online, do so guardedly. A politely-worded e-mail offering a special discount to compensate a customer for his or her trouble or agreeing to replace any defective product supplied may placate the disgruntled buyer.
The plain truth is there is very little recourse for business enterprises that have been unjustly maligned on the Internet.
The saner thing would be to evolve a strategy for combating the negative reviews. The answer is not to have the negative content removed, but to reduce its likelihood of being seen by existing and prospective customers
Try to own as many sites with your name as possible – including .com, .net, and .org. Set up profiles on every major social media site. While it may be admittedly difficult to maintain too many profiles, they will be helpful in the event reputation management is required. Yet another valid reason to set up all of these profiles is to prevent online identity theft.
You should use SEO techniques effectively. Quite often a business learns about negative content through a simple Google search. You should take steps to ensure that negative reviews do not appear in the first two or even three pages of search results.
Your Turn:
What is your online reputation management tips for managing negative reviews online ? We’d love to hear your thoughts.