Responding to a Negative Review: Best Practices and Advice

While browsing a Google search page or after testing your product, you’ve had the unpleasant surprise of coming across a negative review or article about it. It’s a cold shower, and you don’t know how to face it or even how to handle the situation. Don’t panic! This happens to all brands, but it can harm your online reputation if it’s recurrent. This situation might be a good opportunity for self-reflection: what displeased them? Why is my product receiving such criticism? Receiving a negative review can also allow you to draw positives to move forward and open up new opportunities. In this article, Trustt shares some advice to help you manage this type of situation and better react to potential negative reviews or articles about one of your products and how to respond to them.

A Negative Review or Article Surfaces

Discovering a negative review or article about one of your products is never pleasant, and can even be frustrating. On social media, on a blog, on Google, or even on a page of your own website,… Internet reviews contribute to online reputation, and one quickly fears the consequences that bad criticisms could generate. Here are some key figures concerning Internet reviews and their importance:

Negative reviews remain essential to give credibility to a brand or a product. Reviews that are only positive even tend to be suspicious. Thus, while receiving negative reviews or an article can be scary, it’s also an excellent way to prove your good faith and a good way to show that you are listening to the customer. This is how internet users’ reviews have become one of the most powerful marketing tools on the web, and can thus help you stand out.

It then becomes important to monitor the various reviews published on your platform by internet users to avoid a negative review escaping your notice and remaining unanswered. Even if it concerns only one review, it should not be ignored!

Don’t try to request the removal of the article, suppress the review, and make everything disappear. It’s the best way to give a bad image and even worse, to create negative buzz! However, note that if a Google review that is particularly hateful, unfounded, and insulting is posted online, you have the right to report it and request its removal from the platform. This is the only case where you can remove reviews about your products.

How to Correctly React to a Negative Review?

What Response Time?

Reading this review or comment may have made you lose your composure: disappointment, anger, misunderstanding,… The first thing to do is to take a step back from this online review. Don’t respond immediately, on impulse. It’s important to take time to reflect in order to better respond to the expectations of the person who posted such criticism. But don’t take too long either: you need to address the problem while it’s fresh, to not give an impression of “disinterest” to the customer and to be able to provide a solution as quickly as possible in order to transform an unhappy user into a satisfied customer. The business challenge here is to rebuild potentially lost trust and improve the customer experience of your audience. So don’t wait more than 48 hours to respond!

Work on Your Message and Understand the Reasons for the Criticism

When responding to negative criticism, you should, if possible, respond publicly to the review or article, so that your comment is visible to everyone and your audience can see the importance you place on customer experience and satisfaction. Apologize without using awkward phrases like we’re sorry if our product displeased you. The conditional tense should indeed be avoided: there is no if since the product has indeed displeased. Also try to find out more about the factors that made the customer unhappy, especially if the person hasn’t detailed the reasons for this negative review themselves. Why did the product displease? What can be improved?

The consumer will thus feel “listened to, and you will obtain initial ideas for solutions to provide. Don’t be defensive in your response; on the contrary, always keep a positive note to show that you are” receptive to comments and ready to take them into account. Don’t forget that your way of responding contributes to your brand’s image and identity.

Thus, according to a study conducted by LeeResources, 70% of customers whose dissatisfaction was properly handled by a company choose to turn to it again in the future. Conversely, it’s easy to imagine that the majority of customers dissatisfied with a company’s response to their review decide not to buy from it again, and even warn their friends and family, encouraging them to stay away. To ensure optimal customer service, it is therefore essential to seek to learn more about the reason for this comment.

Contact the author of the negative review to propose solutions

This exchange with the influencer or customer is crucial because beyond contributing to the good image of your brand, it allows you to gather useful feedback to improve your current product, as well as your future products. Depending on what they expect, you can also offer them solutions:

You can, for example, send a replacement product if the origin of the problem is a simple manufacturing defect, or send another product from your brand more suitable for the customer. For example, if your target has opted to buy a very rich moisturizer for their oily and acne-prone skin, it’s normal that their experience with the product is not optimal. This is the moment to show your expertise and the real quality of your products by offering them a more fluid and less thick hydrating gel, in other words, more suited to their needs. It’s by opting for this kind of response that you’ll see a negative remark transform into a positive comment on your products as well as your customer service!

If solutions have already been initiated or implemented, you can also mention it in your response. Respond again in a positive manner: this can change the influencer’s opinion about your brand and encourage them to give you another chance!

How to leverage a negative review or article and turn it into a business opportunity?

Gathering reviews, whether positive or negative, is always useful for a company. Negative reviews and articles are an opportunity to learn lessons, but also offer new opportunities to seize.

Reworking your product based on negative reviews

While responding well to a negative review or article is crucial, taking into account the criticisms brought to the product is just as important. They allow you to revisit the product, make modifications or even reformulate it to better meet expectations. At the very least, marketing claims can be adapted thanks to this feedback.

This is where the importance of the exchange you will have had beforehand with the influencer who called you out lies: this conversation will allow you to best understand everything that wasn’t right and remedy it.

This feedback can even be interesting to reinvest in “the development of your future products. Thus, both parties will be satisfied: you get constructive criticism on your product to better improve and meet consumer expectations; while on the users’ side, they remember that you listened to their remarks and obtain a product that really suits them. Once again, it’s” your brand image and your e-reputation that are enhanced!

Receiving feedback, even negative, will help you understand what your prospects expect. For this reason, Trustt has placed targeting at the heart of its solution: by allowing you to obtain authentic reviews, you learn more about your target audience and their insights: what they like and what could be improved, their way of consuming and appreciating a product…

Listening to your community means inviting it to grow. Trustt’s mission is to support your brand in creating an engaged community (which could defend you against your detractors!) and generate UGC content, then help you better understand it to better satisfy it.

Develop Your Online Reputation with the Proposed Solutions

Your brand has provided solutions to the problem encountered by the user, or even product improvements. Congratulations! Why not use this in your communication strategy and influencer campaigns?

Indeed, if the criticisms come from an influencer on social media, you can turn the situation to your advantage by inviting the content creator to follow up on their negative review and create a second publication that will give visibility to your brand. Again, the influencer’s mission will be to be transparent and authentic, as in their first negative feedback.

The challenge for your brand is to show through the influencer the efforts made by your company to improve and make their followers understand that the product now meets their expectations. The content creator can then explain the situation in its entirety, mentioning that you sent a product to test or that you provided a solution to satisfy them. You will thus prove your good faith and your willingness to listen to your consumers. This is a real plus for your online reputation!
Of course, to convince the influencer to create content about your brand again (which will require an investment of time and effort), it is preferable to make your request in a “win-win” approach, that is, to bring them value at the same time as they bring value to you. Why not offer them an affiliate link that they can share with their community? This would also constitute a conversion lever for your brand.

Maintaining and preserving this type of interaction is crucial in customer relations. Good management of negative comments allows you to stand out from the competition and retain customers satisfied with your responsiveness and your commitment to “excellence”. So be open and attentive, and take advantage of the opportunities you can draw from these constructive criticisms!

However, while these negative reviews do not pose a significant threat when they remain isolated, you will find it easier to bounce back if they are “drowned” in a flood of authentic, well-constructed, detailed, and valuable reviews for your product. To maximize your chances of obtaining such reviews, you can resort to implementing a review module like Trustt’s. This will act as a barrier against non-constructive comments and haters who won’t take the time to fill in their feelings about the different aspects of your product!