Thank you to our sponsor whose sponsorship helps keep this newsletter free for our readers:
Laundry Owners Warehouse, is a “One Stop Shop” with over 74,000 replacement parts, a full line of soap and supplies, and a wide variety of used commercial laundry equipment, all in stock and available at LOWlaundry.com.
Laundry Owners Warehouse also sells new commercial laundry equipment and is a proud member of the Dexter Laundry family, “Made in the USA” since 1894.
So someone left a bad review about your garment care business online.
Been there. Done that. Have the battle scars to prove it.
Don’t let it get to you.
One bad review isn’t the end of the world.
BUT, how you handle that bad review can either improve the situation or make it 10 times worse.
Here’s how to make the best of a bad review:
- Investigate thoroughly before responding.
- Respond as quickly as possible.
- 53% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week. 1 in 3 have a shorter time frame of 3 days or less. (Source)
- Understand their situation. Put yourself in their shoes, even if you feel they are wrong.
- Thank them for sharing their feedback. You want people to know you welcome all feedback about your business.
- Be professional. You don’t want to come off as the aggressor. Potential clients will take note.
- Apologize and take responsibility. This is incredibly important. Acknowledge the experience they had and take responsibility for it.
- 45% of consumers say they’re more likely to visit a business that responds to negative reviews. (Source)
- Take the conversation offline to work out the resolution. Offer to message, text, call, or email them to work out the details.
If you’re dealing with a Sandbagger, try this:
- Make sure the reviewer is a Sandbagger (an angry/former employee or competitor leaving a bad review in order to ruin you). Check out last week’s email for more.
- Report/flag the review on the platform and explain why it should be removed (if the platform allows it).
- Review the platform's TOS (terms of service). Most review platforms (like Yelp and Google) state that it is a violation of their TOS for competitors and employees to leave a review about a business.
Let me give you a real example of why responding to negative reviews is so important.
We had a client leave a 1 star review. We responded to it and that review was updated to 4-stars, and then 5-stars.
