How to Respond to a Negative Review on Google?

During your monitoring, in order to get an idea of your reputation on the Internet and social networks, it’s very likely that you’ll come across reviews. Sometimes, some of these comments about your company or your offer may be negative. How should you react in this situation?

It is essential to respond quickly and effectively to this review or to implement an action plan depending on the platforms. Of course, while responding to positive reviews and comments is an easy task, it’s quite the opposite when the review is a negative remark.

Here you will find advice on how to best respond to negative reviews depending on the situations encountered.

The Importance of Reputation and the Impact of Negative Reviews

A company’s e-reputation is the sum of all opinions it generates on the Internet. It’s its digital identity composed of information that can be found online, posted by itself but also by internet users. In the latter case, the elements put on the web are quite difficult to control… Online reputation is nevertheless a very important aspect to monitor for a brand as it represents the “trust capital”.

When prospects discover a brand or new products, many want to learn more. The first reflex is to do a Google search to get more details and information about this brand or the item in question. The query that the prospect will then enter in the search bar will be “Brand name + Reviews” in most cases.

It is therefore vital for a company to regularly monitor its e-reputation since it has the effect of favorably or unfavorably modifying the idea that a potential customer has of you. This “public opinion” of the Web has a direct impact on the conversion rate and on online and offline sales.

Reviews concerning your brand are therefore of capital importance, as they will instantly appear when online users do their information searches at the pre-purchase stage.

An internet user writes a review about your brand for a reason:

• They are extremely satisfied with your product or service and wish to let others know;
• They are very dissatisfied with their purchase experience and want to complain about it to warn other prospects.

In both cases, whether the comment is positive or negative, these are opportunities for your brand to show your loyal customers and prospects that you care about them and their purchase experience.

But this is even more necessary when it comes to a negative message about your company and/or the quality of its offer. Users are more inclined to post a review when it is negative, and it is therefore important to know how to react to such criticisms. Your reaction, your response, and the steps taken afterwards will determine your image!

It should be noted that many companies are not attentive to customer reviews posted online. Many of them receive no response, and this for various reasons. Often, these brands have very little presence on the Internet, because it’s not in their immediate interest or perhaps their target audience never goes there. Such a reaction can quickly disservice a company, which misses out on sales opportunities. In your case, it’s an asset: it’s a good way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Tips for Responding to a Negative Review

While conducting your monitoring, it’s possible to find negative reviews in different formats. The first case will be on the web, through Google or review platforms. The second situation concerns press articles, blog posts and social media reviews, then reviews under your own product pages.

How to Handle a Review Posted on Google

Remain Professional and Courteous

The first thing to do when you see a negative comment is to remain calm. It’s normal to feel offended, frustrated, and defensive. However, your e-reputation is far more important than engaging in a confrontation with the internet user to determine who is right or wrong!

The priority is to transform the negative opinion that the consumer has formed of your brand, or at least indicate that you have heard them. You should never retort that the problem lies with them. It’s important to keep in mind that potential customers will have access to this exchange.

This is why it’s necessary to convey the message that your brand listens to its customers and responds to criticism in an appropriate and cordial manner. Conveying a positive and courteous message will have the effect of recreating the lost sense of trust in the consumer, while strengthening the unconscious satisfaction of prospects even before their purchase!

Staying pleasant and attentive will allow you to step back. It’s an opportunity to show that you are concerned about your community and their satisfaction.

A negative review can have 3 objectives for the person posting it:

• The customer wishes to prompt a reaction from your company in order to obtain a solution to the problem they are facing.
• The customer wants to report some malfunctions with the aim of seeing you improve in the future.
• The person wants to alert web users so that they don’t encounter the same problems with you.

Be Responsive

This is why the second important point is to respond quickly to this negative comment. Customers who encounter a problem generally want it to be resolved, but also want you to handle the situation as quickly as possible.

If you take a long time to react, the customer’s negative opinion can worsen, which can lead to a multiplication of dissatisfied reviews from them on other platforms or social networks.

Respond Personally and Publicly

Your response should not be identical for all negative critiques: it must be personalized. This response will aim to reassure the internet user, and it will show your prospects your responsiveness, especially during problems.

The solution should ideally be made public, even if you ask the consumer to contact customer service. Indeed, during the pre-purchase stage, the prospect imagines potential problems. They may have questions about how you handle problems encountered by customers, or your responsiveness and the help you will provide in case of difficulties on their end. This is mainly why they read reviews: to inform themselves about what they fear the most!

It is therefore necessary for your brand to be proactive and actively monitor negative reviews. Regularly visit review platforms to detect bad experiences and respond to complaints from dissatisfied internet users. This will prevent exacerbating the discontent of certain customers and losing them permanently.

Transform Your Detractors into Ambassadors!

If the problem encountered by the customer has been resolved following your intervention, you should not hesitate to politely ask them to change their negative comment to a positive one. If they don’t, you will still have improved your notoriety and your reputation by having responded in a courteous tone to this negative message. The customer will be more likely to speak highly of your business and your services, giving you free publicity! An effective response, reactivity, and a resolved problem are a good way to retain a customer!

Encourage your consumers to leave favorable reviews when they are satisfied with their purchase or experience. This will also help to decrease the visibility of negative opinions. But don’t view these criticisms negatively. Indeed, as surprising as it may seem, a negative review among many positive ones gives more credibility to your product. Only positive reviews tend to be perceived as suspicious, and internet users may wonder if these reviews are authentic or not.

However, if you are the victim of abusive, degrading, and completely unfounded reviews, be aware that Google My Business offers you the option to remove responses that you no longer wish to see in your review feed. Log in to your Google account and do a web search by typing the name of your establishment or brand. Once on your Google reviews, you will notice that it is possible to report any comment by simply clicking on a small flag. Google then gives you access to a questionnaire page so that you can provide the reasons for your report and they can offer you an appropriate solution.

As you can understand, Google cannot delete just any of your reviews: the condition for it to be removed is, of course, that it is defamatory or inappropriate for your own business as well as for your internet users.

The advantage of this solution is that it is relatively simple and quick to implement, requiring almost no interaction or responses from you. Moreover, from a digital marketing and SEO perspective for your Google review listing, it does not affect the position of your review listing in Google’s algorithm.

Responding to a Negative Review in the Form of a Press Article or Blog Post

The negative review may also have been posted in the form of a press article or blog post. The procedure remains the same as for a Google review. You should adopt a discourse such as “In an effort to improve our products and customer services, we take your feedback into account”.

But in this situation, you will need to contact the person who wrote the article or the blog author who expressed their negative opinion. Put things into perspective by telling yourself that the individual took the time to talk about their experience, albeit bad, but one that mattered to them. The content of this criticism will therefore generally be more argued, and you will be able to more easily identify the reasons for this dissatisfaction.

As with a Google review, pay attention to it and show that you are concerned about the problems encountered. In the example of a cosmetic, food product, or even baby care item, you may, for instance, be led to modify the formulation or recipe during the life cycle of your product. If it is being reformulated, don’t hesitate to inform your consumer, and if it has already been reformulated, send them this new version for them to test again.

When contacting them, perhaps ask for their address. This way, you can offer to send them another product that is more suitable and better fits their needs. This will allow them to form a new opinion of your brand without basing it on a single reference that you deem unsuitable for them. This will enable them to re-evaluate their opinion, and thus make an edit to their original article with a positively oriented update in your favor.

You can continue to nurture this relationship with the blog author or press article writer by sending them, for example, new products to test exclusively when you develop new items. Your detractors could perhaps become your best ambassadors, and their opinions will then be all the more authentic and credible to the public.

How to Respond to a Review Posted on Your Product Page

When a negative review has been posted on one of your product pages, it’s normal to wonder if it will affect your sales. So should you leave a negative review on the page where your visitor is supposed to make their purchase?

If the comment is constructive and well-written, it is generally advised to leave it on your product page. Indeed, this will help to lend credibility to your brand. You will thus show that your business doesn’t only display positive remarks and doesn’t hide negative reviews. If you judge that this review is non-constructive, provide a response to the internet user as you would have done for a Google review or on an article.

Promote a mechanism to generate new positive reviews, such as the one offered by Trustt with its product testing campaigns. The software allows you to obtain authentic and detailed reviews that thoroughly examine all the characteristics of your product. You will then be able to integrate their feedback easily on your own site. This will strengthen your credibility and the trust that your visitors will place in your brand, and ultimately, encourage the conversion of prospects into customers!