The Right Way to Respond to Positive and Negative Customer Reviews

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Business Hacks To Get You More Customers-Chispa MagazineHow does your business respond to reviews? Do you bother at all? The good news is that answering reviews, both positive and negative, is quick and easy. No matter where the review pops up—be it social media, Google, Amazon, or anywhere else online—your company can capitalize on good reviews and minimize the damage of negative reviews. Let’s take a look at how you can do that.

Responding to Positive Reviews
If a customer leaves a sensational review for you, it really can’t get any better, can it? Well, it can, provided you respond. Here’s how:

  • It’s polite to respond. If you are getting amazing business reviews from your customers, it’s polite to thank them. Done online, that compliment is public, as is your response, and customers look for polite, trust-worthy, and interactive businesses.
  • It affects your search rankings. Proper replies can improve your SEO ranking and help great reviews show up in business search results.
  • Everyone is watching. The majority of customers head online for reviews and everyone from current clients to potential clients may read the review, so by replying; you get to reach out to those people, too. It’s subtle marketing at its best.

How to Really Respond To Positive Reviews 

  1. Be specific and thankful. Make sure the reviewer knows that a real person is replying to their review and thanking them for something they mentioned.
  1. Use business name and relevant keywords. Using your company’s location, category, and name in the response will help your positive review show up in search results.
  1. Add a touch of marketing. Your reply is, of course, public, and it will be read by other people, including potential future customers, so be sure to throw in a little marketing. Mention a new feature or promotion, or a subtle reason why they had a good experience.
  1. Add a call to action. Why not ask the customer to come back again, spread the word, or make use of another of your services?

Responding To Negative Reviews
You can’t ignore a bad review and hope it disappears. It can make things worse for your business.

  1. Sympathize and apologize. Go ahead and acknowledge the customer’s concerns right away. Even if you feel they are unfounded, you need to be sympathetic to their bad experience.
  1. Again, use the opportunity to add a little marketing. You can add a touch of marketing by explaining what your regular customers usually experience.
  1. Take the conversation offline. Give the reviewer contact information for someone at your company so that the problem can be discussed in person. Better yet, ask the reviewer for a contact number and get a member of staff to contact them directly.
  1. Keep things short, sweet, and simple. You don’t need to badger the reviewer or go into great detail. Do so, and you risk saying something that could cause a great deal of upset and just add even further negativity to the review.
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Mia Guerra

Mia Guerra

Executive Editor at Chispa Magazine
Executive Editor at Chispa Magazine, Mia Guerra is a writer at heart. Regardless the topic, she loves to investigate, encourage, and ruminate on topics that can make us better people. Aiming to live a Proverbs 31 life, Mia is ecstatic to be following her calling with Chispa. At home she is her husband's sidekick and together they are raising a God-fearing family in Atlanta.

Mia Guerra

Executive Editor at Chispa Magazine, Mia Guerra is a writer at heart. Regardless the topic, she loves to investigate, encourage, and ruminate on topics that can make us better people. Aiming to live a Proverbs 31 life, Mia is ecstatic to be following her calling with Chispa. At home she is her husband's sidekick and together they are raising a God-fearing family in Atlanta.