You try your best to provide an exceptional product or service, and you gain a following of happy customers along the way. Some even become advocates by writing a 5-star online review. That helps your business in 2 ways:
- Public relations: a well-reviewed company looks better in a list than one with few or no reviews.
- Search engine optimization: reputable businesses generally perform better in search engines, and in AI recommendations, than poorly reviewed ones. (Read is your business well-reviewed on Google?)
What’s a bad customer?
Eventually, despite your best efforts, you’ll cross paths with a bad customer. You may not have provided a bad service or product, but it didn’t meet their standards. Maybe their standards are unreachable. Maybe they just like to complain. Whatever the reason, they post a negative review, and everyone can read it. What do you do now?
Can you get a negative review removed?
On an independent review platform, such as your Google Business Profile, Facebook page, Yelp or Angi, you generally can’t get a review removed unless it breaks the platform’s rules, for example when it:
- Contains hateful, violent or inappropriate content
- Is advertising or spam (the reviewer promotes their own business, website, phone number or email)
- Is off-topic and has nothing to do with your business
- Involves a conflict of interest, such as a competitor or former employee
If a Google review falls into one of these categories, report it from your Google Business Profile (or the flag option next to the review). Google reviews the report and decides whether to remove it.
Otherwise, the review, however damaging, is legitimate. Customers have the right to post a 1-star review about a poor experience. So, what now?
Best practices
- Reach out privately, if you feel comfortable. Have an honest conversation and offer to make the situation right. If you resolve it, the customer may choose to update their review on their own. Don’t offer a refund, coupon or anything else in exchange for changing or removing a review; that violates Google’s review policies and federal consumer-review rules.
- Respond publicly. Reply directly to the review from your Google Business Profile. Be brief, polite and apologetic where appropriate, and don’t offer anything in the public reply, since everyone will see it.
- Collect more 5-star reviews. Ask every happy customer for a review. More genuine 5-star reviews bury the occasional 1-star one and raise your average rating. Ask all customers, not just the ones you expect to be happy; selectively soliciting only positive reviews is against Google’s policies.
Google also suggests these guidelines when replying to reviews:
- Resolve issues privately when possible, and keep public replies short.
- Address issues constructively; don’t use replies to advertise.
- Don’t ask reviewers for anything or offer them anything.
- Be professional and polite. The world can read your response.
Conclusion
Negative reviews are part of running a business, and one will hit every now and then. Be professional, polite and responsive. Keep your average rating high by asking customers for reviews, stay on top of your brand’s online reputation, and may your business enjoy much success!
About the author
Leighton Smith is Pioneer Media’s website designer, web developer and webmaster, based in East Tennessee. As a solopreneur, he is each client’s one point of contact and has built hundreds of websites since learning to code in 2006.
