In this digital world, people trust online reviews and consider them while purchasing. People review your businesses on Google, Yelp, yahoo, etc. Based on their experiences, people review your goods and services. Sometimes competitors also leave negative reviews to damage your reputation. Negative reviews can impact customers’ purchasing decisions. According to review trackers, 94% of consumers said that negative reviews had convinced them to avoid purchasing a good or service. 

For this reason, you need to manage your online reviews and build a positive and strong reputation. In this article, we’ll learn how to respond to negative reviews and how they affect your business. Also, we will learn why review management software is necessary for your business. 

 What is a negative review?

A negative review generally arises whenever a customer is unsatisfied with your services or goods. Sometimes your competitors use it to damage your reputation and credibility. 

Customers express their negative reviews in the comment section of social media, in surveys or forms, emails, and ratings, and sometimes call the customer service number. Customers usually leave a negative review whenever they are not satisfied with the quality of your product or service. It can be a written review, image review, or video review.

How negative feedback can affect your business

A negative review can hamper your business in many ways such as 

• Affect the purchasing decision of customers: Whenever a potential customer sees a negative review about your product or service they can form a negative opinion about your business. Study says that even one negative review can affect a potential customer’s purchasing decision. 
• Decrease the sales: Negative reviews can affect your sales. After seeing a negative review, potential customers will not buy from you or will probably look for another substitute. 
• Damage brand’s reputation: Customers value online reviews and trust them. Negative reviews can create a negative reputation for your business. People will be reluctant to buy from you due to your poor reputation. 
• It can affect your search engine rankings: Search Engine Ranking depends on the quality and quantity of online reviews. Large number of negative reviews can make you rank lower. 
• It will reduce your visibility: Large amounts of negative reviews can make you rank lower affecting your visibility. It will reduce your visibility and eventually reduce your sales.

Tips to respond to negative feedback or reviews 

Negative reviews are not always harmful, you can positively use them as well. Negative reviews highlight the aspects that are underperforming or do not match the expectations of the potential customers. You can learn from such reviews and can make alterations to your product and service. You can focus more time and resources on the weaker aspects of your product or service and can improve it. However, addressing negative reviews is also very important, you can’t leave them unanswered as it furthermore damage your business and reputation. Here are some of the ways to respond to negative reviews and turn them into positive reviews.

• Provide Solutions: Provide solutions for the negative reviews. Customers who were not satisfied with the quality of your products or service or if there was some inconvenience in the process leave a negative review. Try to provide effective solutions to their problems. 
• Respond quickly: Respond within 24 hours and provide an effective solution. Quick responses indicate that you care about them and want to help them. 
• Apologize and accept your mistake: Apologize for the inconvenience caused to them and accept your mistake gracefully rather than arguing with them. 
• Response in a professional manner: Respond professionally. Don’t be emotional or aggressive in your tone. Maintain a professional tone and thank them for leaving a review. Try to provide solutions in a professional tone. 
• Highlight your USP: Highlight your positives and Unique Selling point (USP). Try to cover or compensate for the negative review by highlighting the positive aspects of your business. 
• Show concern and empathy: Always show concern and empathy while responding to the customers. Make them feel that you care about them and value their opinion. 
• Personalize your message: Try to personalize the message. You can do so by directly addressing the person by his or her name and adding the relevant details that you have about the customer while responding to them. It makes them feel special and valued. It shows how to spend time understanding a customer’s opinion and try to fulfill their needs and expectations. 
• Offline conversation: If the issue is complicated, then try to reach out to them personally through a phone call or email. 
• Follow up: Once you have addressed their review try to send a follow up email or message to them asking are they satisfied with the solutions and did the team address their issues efficiently. It shows that you care about them and how efficient your team and business is. 
• Provide Giveaways: Everyone loves the giveaways. Try to compensate the customer with some sort of giveaways such as free shipping, 15% off etc. It satisfies the customers and helps in converting the negative reviews into positive. 
• Accept negative feedback, don’t delete them: Never delete your negative reviews and dont ignore them. Thank the customer for leaving the comment and addressing their issue. It builds transparency and trust in customers. 
• Use it as an opportunity: Use this as an opportunity to improve your products and services. So that you can fulfill the expectations of the customers and can provide a smooth experience to them. 

Why should you consider using a review management software

In today’s time managing online reviews is a time-consuming and daunting task especially if your brand has a strong online presence. It is important to track every mention of your brand across multiple platforms. 

Also, small and medium businesses find it difficult to build a strong presence or reputation due to a lack of resources and the dominance of competitors. Thus in today’s time review management software is a need for every business and brand. Review Management Software streamlines the process and provides valuable data to you. 

One major reason why you should consider a review management software is that it monitors and sends replies to all the reviews across multiple platforms from a single dashboard. It makes sure that every review has been addressed and has not gone unnoticed. 

It also provides useful data related to the customers such as sentiment analysis, wherein you can identify and track the change in the sentiment of the customers over time and make wise and successful decisions accordingly. This can reduce the amount of negative reviews or convert them into positive.

Review management software helps in identifying fake reviews by employing social monitoring tools. These tools identify the fake reviews and then take corrective action against them. 

It offers a variety of benefits and ensures that your brand gets more visibility and builds a strong reputation. Lumia 360 offers an effective and successful Review Management Software. We cater to small and medium businesses as we understand the special needs of such businesses. Our Review Management Software has a proven track record in increasing the search engine rank of our customers, increasing their customer base, and simplifying their review management process. To know more about our services email us at info@lumia360.com or call us at 514-668-5599.

Conclusion

If you want a successful long-running business then building a strong online reputation is a must. You can do so by effectively addressing the negative reviews. Customers leave reviews on Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, Amazon, TripAdvisor, etc. Although every platform is important, Google My Business is most crucial for maintaining an online presence, as Google is one of the most used search engines. Google’s business listing platform has a review section wherein everyone can leave a review. Lumia 360’s Review Management Software has expertise in handling reviews on Google My Business. Having a strong online reputation increases your engagement rate, sales, builds a brand identity in the market, builds trust in customers and increase brand loyalty. 

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