Earlier we’ve discussed why online reviews are essential and how it can benefit small businesses.

As consumers are becoming increasingly honest with their reviews, how do you deal with negative feedback? We look at 5 ways small businesses can recover from bad reviews without hurting their brand.

1. Solve The Problem

Don't just apologise to consumers, find out what caused the issue and actively try and reach a solution that leaves both sides happy.

Consumers appreciate when businesses go out of their way to help and this will undoubtedly help build rapport.

2. Be polite and professional

Don’t take bad reviews personally.

Take it in your stride and deal with the situation as best as possible, don’t push the blame onto customers or make excuses.

3. Take Responsibility

Following on from the last point, take responsibility and ownership of your services and the issues that follow.

Personalise your responses and make sure the customer feels like they're being listened to. This is instead of the generic ‘I’m sorry to hear this’ response.

4. Take the issue off-line

No-one likes a public dispute.

After acknowledging the problem encourage the customer to email, private message or call in to resolve the matter.

Once you have been able to resolve the issue, you can then post a public comment on the review site detailing how the issue was resolved.  Doing this showcases publicly how your company takes time to address concerns.

5. Train Employees

Finally, avoid future bad reviews by learning from the experience and training employees to meet higher standards of service.

Reviews can be brutal but you don’t have to treat this as a negative, these can be heavily valuable in bettering your business and make sure that the areas of critique are fixed.

Conclusion

All feedback, especially negative ones are essential in highlighting failing areas and allow you to engage with users to find out teething problems when they crop up.

Following these steps, you will be able to successfully reach out to a customer who might not have come back to your business.