How Can You Save Your Brand from Bad Reviews?

In this digital era, online reviews play a major role in either making or breaking a brand. You cannot afford negative comments on your product, services or brand. A bad review on social media or any online review platform may prove a nightmare for you to protect your brand’s reputation. However, you can always rebuild the trust by demonstrating that you care for your customers and your offerings are the best in the industry.

Here is a brief guideline to help you in effectively saving your brand value despite negative reviews doing rounds in the online world.

1. You need a Strategy

Your quick and strategic action is important while handling bad reviews. Your swift response will demonstrate that you value customer’s feedback and take their opinion seriously. However, a careful and strategic consideration is required when answering to customer’s concerns. You need to respond in a thoughtful manner and your tone must reflect empathy and a professional attitude. You may need to create a dedicated team for monitoring bad reviews and addressing them professionally whenever required. To dispel any rumor, wrong narrative or misleading facts about your brand, you may need to send out press releases to the media outlets as well.

2. Sometimes Apologies Help

When addressing bad reviews, always be humble to acknowledge the concerns of a customer. You may need to tender an apology for any inconvenience caused. Your genuine apology will help in diffusing the frustration and create a way for the positive dialogue with the concerned customer. Avoid being arrogant or offensive, as this will certainly escalate the issue.

3. Try to Make Conversation Private

The effort to address a customer’s grievance on social media or a public platform may escalate the problem. On a public platform, others may also join the communication, making it more complicated. It’s always better to acknowledge the grievance on a public platform and assure the customer to address the issue quickly via email or phone. When you try to resolve the issue privately, it can develop a better communication with the concerned customer.

4. No Excuses, Only Remedies

Your swift action will bring more value than an explanation. When addressing a customer’s grievances, offer him/her a practical solution that can help resolve the issue. This could be a replacement of a faulty product, partial or full refund of the money, or any other form of real solution. Besides the solution, it’s always better to offer some discounts on the next purchase, if you want your customers to keep coming to you and not deterred by the bad reviews.

5. Learn from the Feedback

Don’t take bad reviews as only a negative criticism. Many times, reviews can give you valuable insights for you to help improve your brand value. Never ignore complaints, but analyze them. You may identify some specific patterns in complaints and this will help you in identifying systemic issues. The feedback may also reveal you scopes for product improvement or service refinement. On the basis of the customer feedback, you may feel the need to improve the operational process and supply chain.

6. Encourage Customers to Share Positive Experiences

While addressing bad reviews quickly is essential, you should not forget to amplify positive experiences of your customers or users. Prepare a list of satisfied customers and ask them to leave reviews. You may offer them some incentives to encourage them to leave reviews. Don’t forget to provide them with easy-to-use links for posting positive reviews. A host of positive and encouraging reviews online will help in diluting the impact of bad comments.

7. Regular Reputation Management is Important

Any brand today may subject to persistent negative feedback. If you face large-scale negative reviews in a regular manner, you need to think about investing in reputation management. An expert reputation management professional may prove extremely helpful in restoring public trust and improving search engine rankings. You may also launch a press release campaign for rebuilding your brand image.

8. Your Transparency is the Key

A transparent approach helps fostering trust. If your brand fails to meet a customer’s expectations, don’t try to mislead them. Instead communicate them the steps your company is going to take to resolve the issue. Customers will always appreciate your honest approach and are more likely to do business with you again for the corrective measures you take to rectify the situation. Convey them the business process improvement or quality control measures you are going to adopt to help prevent such situations occurring again.

9. Building a Positive Brand Culture

If you cultivate a brand culture where customer satisfaction is your top-most priority, it is very less likely to get negative reviews. You need to foster a culture where you value product quality and accountability. Moreover, with your employee-centric HR policies, you can create a happy and dedicated workforce that can be trusted to deliver excellent services. These employees will work hard to reduce the chances of negative reviews.

10. Regular Monitoring is Essential

Besides a dedicated team, you may also set up tools for monitoring your online reputation on a regular basis. You may set up Google Alerts or take help of some specialized tracking software to find out reviews on your brand. You need to review customer feedback on a regular basis to stay updated about the customer feedback. When you are aware of negative reviews, you can be ready to handle the crisis situation.

Conclusion

Bad reviews may spell disaster for any brand. You need to address them with professionalism and in a timely manner. By offering practical solutions to your concerned customers, you can turn your criticism into customer satisfaction. With the right strategy, a brand can always survive bad reviews in this internet age.