How Should You Handle A Bad Review
With potential customers placing more importance on reviews than ever before, especially if they are new to your products and services, this is an area of your business which must not be overlooked.
Your ‘Google My Business’ profile (which helps to generate your listing on Google Maps) is arguably the most important online profile you can establish for your business. This is in no small part due to the fact that when someone takes the time to leave a review, it will be displayed in Google’s search results. This can be extremely positive but what should you do if someone decides to leave you a poor review?
The Most Important Step!!
The first and most important bit of advice we give is to not overreact! Whilst we the receipt of a bad review can seem to be quite personal, the facts are that so long as you don’t receive too many, a bad review is not the end of the world. In fact, it is widely acknowledged that many customers are believed to be mistrustful of businesses that have flawless 5* ratings – as it can be difficult to believe that anyone is really that good! As such, a small number of poor reviews can actually add an air of realism to your profile.
Please do not resort to drastic steps such as deleting your account, changing all of your details or setting up brand new profiles. Establishing an effective online presence can be tricky enough once, never mind twice!
Always Take The Time To Respond
Always take the time to respond to a negative review but just importantly, always remember to ‘take the high road’ wherever possible. However tempting it may be to give people a piece of your mind, this is very unlikely to be constructive and is very likely to damage your reputation far more than the review will. Just as the review can be viewed by everyone, so can your response.
It’s really important to answer in a professional way. If you feel that an apology is necessary, then, by all means, include one in your response. Try and provide some type of context to the original review as a benefit for future readers and wherever possible, encourage whoever left the review to continue the conversation privately (via phone, e-mail, DM etc) in an effort to resolve the situation rather than continuing the conversation in public.
Use The Review To Help You Improve
Whilst it is not certain that all negative reviews will be warranted, it is possible that they have some merit. Can you use the negative comments as a way to improve your service? If similar comments keep appearing from different people, perhaps a particular area of your business could do with refining. It’s important to keep a level of perspective and whilst we fully understand that no-one will ever enjoy receiving a poor review, don’t worry too much if one appears on your profile.
Need Some More Help
Would like to find out more about dealing with bad reviews? Give the Footprint Digital team a call on Tel. No. 01883 372488 today.
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How To Update My Google Maps Listings
When your business information is verified on Google, you can keep your business’s online presence current with accurate and timely information.
If you still need to claim and verify your business, get started with Sign up and verify your business.
Update your business information
When information about your business changes, you can update it with Google My Business. Regular updates help ensure that we can share the most accurate information with your potential customers. In some cases, we might not accept changes if we believe that they’re inaccurate.
Edit your information
- Log in to Google My Business.
- Choose the page that you’d like to manage.
- If you have multiple locations, open the location that you’d like to manage.
- From the menu, click Info.
- Click the section that you want to change, then enter the new information.
- It may take up to 60 days to delete information that you previously added. Information that’s also publicly available or from other sources might not be removed.
- Business descriptions, like summaries or keywords from the web that appear next to your business, aren’t editable. Learn more about business summaries.
- Click Finished editing.
Learn more about how to edit your business information.
Tip: To make changes on the go, you can use the Google My Business mobile app for Android or iOS.
Add owners and managers to share responsibility
As you know, it takes hard work to run a business. You may not have time to keep your online presence as fresh as you’d like. Owners and managers can help.
To delegate responsibility to other members of your staff, add owners and managers to your Business Profile. You can maintain your ownership of the page when you add other owners and managers.
Meet the three kinds of users on Google My Business
Assign owners and managers
- Log in to Google My Business.
- Choose the page that you’d like to manage.
- If you have multiple locations, open the location that you’d like to manage.
- From the menu, click Users.
- On the ‘Managers of [your business]’ box, in the top right, click Invite new managers.
- To select the user’s role, below their name, click Owner, Manager or Communications manager.
- Click Invite.
Invitees have the option to accept the invitation and immediately become profile owners or managers.
When a user accepts an invitation, the owners of the profile receive an email notification. All users in the account can view the names and email addresses listed on the assigned page.
To cancel pending invitations, you can click the X in the row with the invitation that you want to remove.
Contact Us
Footprint specialises in creating bespoke websites designed to help take your business to another level. We have been providing web design Surrey since 1998 and if you’d like to speak to us regarding any of our services, give us a call on 01883 372488 or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.
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How Can Reviews Impact Your Business?
This is often not popular for a variety of reasons but it is impossible to argue with the fact that potential customers often use the reviews of a service or product as a key tool in their decision-making process.
Whether people are looking for a restaurant for an evening meal, a hotel for their holiday, a plumber to fix a broken pipe or anything in between, online reviews have quickly become an integral part of promoting your business online.
The Pros and Cons of Online Reviews
There are of course two sides to everything and to provide you with a full picture of the pros and cons of online reviews, we have drawn up a list of potential positive and negative impacts.
5 Positive Ways Reviews Can Impact Your Business
Positive reviews can result in:
- Increased conversion rates (customers spending more money!!)
- Creating increased trust with your clients
- Free advertising (great reviews on external sites can be key in drawing in new customers)
- Improved results on search engines (regular reviews are strongly believed to play a role in ranking algorithms)
- Increased feedback (the ability to leave reviews can be key in opening lines of communication with your customers)
5 Negative Ways Reviews Can Impact Your Business
On the flip side, receiving negative reviews can result in:
- An impact on the perceived reputation of your business
- Damage to trust levels (Too many negative reviews or no reviews at all can impact the trustworthiness of a business)
- Increased costs (some 3rd party review sites will charge to use their services)
- Reviews being left which may not be accurate (3rd party review sites offer complete freedom on the reviews that can be left)
- Without a drip-feed of reviews, old reviews can seem out of date
Please Note – It is essential to remember that regardless of the platform, you will always have the option to reply to any review. Positive or negative, responses are strongly encouraged. However, taking the high ground in response to a negative review is also strongly encouraged!
If you would like more information relating to online reviews and how they can impact your business, please contact Footprint Digital today.
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