No matter how hard you work to please your customers, it’s impossible to keep everyone happy all of the time. But bad reviews of your business on social media can sting on a personal level, as well as cause damage to your business’s reputation.

In some cases, the individual may be going through a difficult situation and your business unfairly ends up in the firing line. Or, your business may have genuinely made an error and you’ll need to take action to remedy the situation.

Either way, to ensure the best outcome for both your customers and your business, it’s important to follow the correct protocol when it comes to handling bad reviews on your social media pages, so see our top tips below. 

Keep your reply professional

It’s completely understandable that when you read negative reviews about your products, services, or employees, you’re going to get upset. But no matter what people say about your business online – a business is exactly what you are.

Therefore, your reply needs to remain as professional as if you were responding to a positive review. Using threatening or offensive language may provide a cathartic release in the moment, but can do more harm than good, so take a breather before responding to the person, so you won’t regret your reply later. Remember, your response will be public.

Reach out to the customer

If the person is posting on social media, you should be able to see their handle, so reach out to them via direct message. This is not an opportunity to send them any negativity back. Instead, you could ask them to give you a call to discuss their concerns further, as well as reassure them that their custom does matter to your business. 

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, some customers are going to be impossible to please. But at least if you know you’ve made every effort to resolve the issue and done everything properly when trying to remedy the situation, you’re going to feel a lot better.

See what can be learned from the experience

If your business has made a genuine mistake, then the only way forward is to hold your hands up and admit it. Yes, it’s going to feel uncomfortable and hurt your pride, but use it as a business learning tool. Gather your employees together and discuss what happened – the aim is not to cast blame at anyone’s feet, rather to understand what went wrong and why so that it doesn’t happen again. Using the experience to strengthen your business offering as a whole is the best way to achieve a positive outcome out of an initially negative situation.

https://unsplash.com/photos/SYTO3xs06fU

Hire a Social Media manager 

Replying to negative social media reviews can easily take a bad turn if you’re already stressed as a busy business owner. A social media manager is going to take an objective view of the situation, ensuring the reply is heavy on damage control.

Social media managers can also monitor the tone of customer feedback overall, identifying potential issues before they have a chance to lead to a bad review, let alone a loss in trade.

Let’s not forget that it’s possible to receive bad reviews about your business based on the content you post across your feeds too, especially if you misjudge the tone or inadvertently end up causing offense. But if your social media content is being carefully curated by your social media manager, such situations are far less likely to happen. If hiring a social media manager feels like something which could benefit your business, there are a wide variety of specialists to choose from

Either way, to ensure the best outcome for both your customers and your business, it’s important to follow the correct protocol when it comes to handling bad reviews on your social media pages, so see our top tips below. 

Keep your reply professional

It’s completely understandable that when you read negative reviews about your products, services, or employees, you’re going to get upset. But no matter what people say about your business online – a business is exactly what you are.

Therefore, your reply needs to remain as professional as if you were responding to a positive review. Using threatening or offensive language may provide a cathartic release in the moment, but can do more harm than good, so take a breather before responding to the person, so you won’t regret your reply later. Remember, your response will be public.

Reach out to the customer

If the person is posting on social media, you should be able to see their handle, so reach out to them via direct message. This is not an opportunity to send them any negativity back. Instead, you could ask them to give you a call to discuss their concerns further, as well as reassure them that their custom does matter to your business. 

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, some customers are going to be impossible to please. But at least if you know you’ve made every effort to resolve the issue and done everything properly when trying to remedy the situation, you’re going to feel a lot better.

See what can be learned from the experience

If your business has made a genuine mistake, then the only way forward is to hold your hands up and admit it. Yes, it’s going to feel uncomfortable and hurt your pride, but use it as a business learning tool. Gather your employees together and discuss what happened – the aim is not to cast blame at anyone’s feet, rather to understand what went wrong and why so that it doesn’t happen again. Using the experience to strengthen your business offering as a whole is the best way to achieve a positive outcome out of an initially negative situation.

https://unsplash.com/photos/SYTO3xs06fU

Hire a Social Media manager 

Replying to negative social media reviews can easily take a bad turn if you’re already stressed as a busy business owner. A social media manager is going to take an objective view of the situation, ensuring the reply is heavy on damage control.

Social media managers can also monitor the tone of customer feedback overall, identifying potential issues before they have a chance to lead to a bad review, let alone a loss in trade.

Let’s not forget that it’s possible to receive bad reviews about your business based on the content you post across your feeds too, especially if you misjudge the tone or inadvertently end up causing offense. But if your social media content is being carefully curated by your social media manager, such situations are far less likely to happen. If hiring a social media manager feels like something which could benefit your business, there are a wide variety of specialists to choose from.

https://unsplash.com/photos/tLZhFRLj6nY

Take legal action if necessary

Sadly, sometimes bad reviews on social media are in fact the work of a business rival or someone who has a personal grudge against you. If removing the post is not a suitable response then you may be able to consult a legal professional.

The legal service to look for is ‘defamation on social media’, meaning the person has posted content with the deliberate aim of ruining your business’s reputation with no evidence that anything they are claiming actually took place.

To sum up 

Getting clued up on how to handle bad social media reviews is part and parcel of running a business in the digital age. While it’s certainly never a pleasant experience, the way you handle your response can ultimately cast you in a good light or make the situation worse.  

If you’re also doing your utmost to please your customers, then it’s highly likely they’ll be leaving you with positive reviews on social media too. If so, these will soon eclipse the odd bad review which no business is immune from altogether.