One topic that comes up quite often when speaking to business owners on BView is the impact a poor review could have on their businesses reputation. They shouldn’t be so worried though. This article tells how the odd negative review of a business can make a potential customer trust those other perfect scores that little bit more – it makes feedback seem balanced, and obvious that the business has nothing to hide.
In my experience, any time I seek out a new business to work with I’ll seek out those few negative comments, not so I can find out what could go wrong, but more importantly, so that I can get an idea of how the company responded when things turned bad.
Earlier in the year when a reviewer complained that our offer of a Google Adwords voucher for new business members was “rubbish” for existing advertisers we took the time to address their concerns, and hopefully made the promotion a little clearer for everyone. Another great example of how important negative feedback is to can be seen in Louisa E’s comments. We worked hard to address each of the issues she raised about the site and are confident BView is better because of it!
BView knows how important it is to give business owners an opportunity to put their side of the story across and explain what went wrong and how they’ve set about resolving problems or complaints raised by reviewers. Through BView, businesses can add a response to any review left for their business, and this is a valuable way of showing how important customer satisfaction is to your company. If you’re looking for some more examples when a bad review ended up making the business look good, read this.
Potential customers will understand that no business gets it right every time for every customer and will be encouraged to see a businesses working hard to recognise where they’ve made mistakes and what they’ve done to correct them – and to make sure it doesn’t happen again!
Don’t forget that all feedback will have a positive impact on your businesses SEO (it’s visibility to search engines) so if you haven’t already, invite a few of your customers to review you on BView.
Tags: bad reviews, customer satisfaction, negative comments, negative reviews, reputation, seo
Any firm or tradesman, consultant etc. can be great when things go right. What they are prepared to do for you when things go wrong is the real measure of their greatness. Remember when things went right although good, they are only doing their job. When things go wrong, that is their chance to see if they will "go the extra mile".
I agree that a few bad testimonials add credibility to a business listing, within reason. For example, my business audience is women drivers and their customer satisfaction levels are fairly low, in general, in the motor industry ie garages and new car dealerships.
It is SO obvious to me when bland testimonials have been solicited (we are always happy here - the people are so nice, that sort of thing...) or are from friends or members of the family. But maybe not so obvious to those who trust all they read?
At least a few criticisms can balance the books although if a competitor plants these, how would we know?
The article was very relevant I thought! Thank you.
Very good point well made. I saw a bad review of a recruitment company recently, and the way the business owner responded was so profesional I was quite impressed. Chances are, the person making the negative comment was probably a bit of a wally anyway.