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Reviews aren’t always glowing, and that’s OK

It would be great if every review was a testament to your awesomeness, but that’s not reality. In the real business world, some people aren’t going to be happy with your service, and they’re going to be the customers who go the extra mile to tell people just how unhappy with you they are. The squeaky hinge gets the grease.

Our knee-jerk reaction is to lament our misfortune at having a one-star review amongst all our other great ones, but the truth is, we should be excited when we have a bad review. Sure, it doesn’t look great in our lineup, but it’s our chance to hear our customers and work on what needs to happen to improve the customer experience.

Key takeaways:

• Don’t take negative reviews personally
• Learn to actively listen to complaints
• Question them, don’t argue
• Resolve the issue and earn their trust

Swallow your pride

Obviously, no one wants to get negative reviews. It’s hard to accept, hard to read, and can really get you down. You’ve worked hard on your business and put so much of yourself into it that when someone gives poor feedback, you tend to take it personally.

It’s important to remember that now the business and the person are separate entities. You’re not the only person who has touched your business and made it grow. You’ve hired contract workers, firms, and even employees. Systems and ways of working change across people, and what this review is telling you is that something in that lineup isn’t jiving with your vision for the company.

Instead of taking the review personally, think of it as the customer saying, “I know this isn’t how you want your business to run, but it’s what’s happening.”

Apologize to the customer for the experience, assure them you’re looking into it, and then follow through with it.

Practice active listening

We can’t hear what the customer is saying or get to the root of their problem if we’re not giving them 100% of our attention. We need to focus on them and hear what they’re saying rather than think we know what they’re saying and trying to form our response to them.

If we’re focusing on how we’re going to respond, then we’re not listening to what went wrong. We need to be fully engaged with the complaint in order to fix it.

Resist the urge to defend your company and yourself. Keep an open mind and check your ego at the door because it will only get in the way of fixing the problem.

Active listening is where questions live. When you’re talking to a customer about their negative experience, don’t be afraid to ask them questions. Digging deeper into the issue can help you formulate an action plan to resolve it. More importantly, asking questions will make them feel heard and make them feel as though you’re taking their issue seriously and want to resolve it.

Where trust is built

The most important thing to remember is that trust has been broken. When a customer decides to do business with you, it’s because they trust your brand. This is either their first interaction with you, or one of their many, but broken trust impacts new and long-standing customers the same.

But don’t fret, you’re building their trust in you again. You’re listening to them; you’re working on resolving the issue, and once that’s fixed, you’re going to follow up with them.

Not only are you showing them that the issue they’re experiencing is not the service you want to provide, you’re showing them just how much they matter to your company and working to make amends. They feel valued, and they feel special.

The positive side of this is they are likely to amend their previous negative review to rave about how caring you were and how you went the extra mile to make sure they were happy, and their problem was resolved.

Understand that, while this is one customer leaving a review, they’re not alone. This means other customers have probably experienced the same issue and are not saying anything about it. Instead, they may be dealing with a subpar experience from your company, or they may have given up on you after the experience.

Do you know how your customers truly feel about your business and services? At CrewHu, we make it easier to get feedback from customers and take action to correct issues before they become bigger problems. Check out our 1 click survey and get more responses from your customers!