A Property Management Guide: Responding To Negative Reviews
How To Respond To Negative Reviews
Negative reviews are inevitable when you run a business. Many businesses delete negative reviews or just do not respond to them. This, many times, is not the best way to deal with negative reviews about your business.
Correctly responding to negative reviews can be crucial for our business. It helps show our clients that we strive to deliver excellent customer service. Here are some tips we use for responding to negative reviews.
Tips For Responding To Negative Reviews
Tip #1: Develop A Plan
Monitor reviews constantly and devise a response strategy for your team. We have a specific team member in charge of responding to all our review, whether positive or negative, as well as follow up. Replying to positive review can be easy and forthright. Responding with gratitude and a commitment to continue upholding high standards is a great way to respond to positive comments. However, dealing with negative reviews can be more complicated and must be treated with care and methodology.
Tip #2: Stay Calm & Calmly Reply On
A calm, level head is vital when responding to negative comments. If upset by the comment, take a moment to cool off and try understanding the customer’s point of view. Flying off the handle or being harsh can, and mostly likely will, backfire. If the comment is vulgar or inappropriate, it is permissible to delete the comment.
Tip #3: Quickly Reply
Most customers expect a company to respond within 24 hours of their comments, sometimes even sooner. Try to respond as quickly as possible, after you have logically and calmly thought through the negative comment.
Our residents, owners, and investors need to know that we hear their concerns and we care about them. We do our very best to reply quickly and politely. We may not be able to solve the problem or concern immediately, but we are attentive. We are usually aware of the issue and are trying to solve it. Sometimes, speaking to a client face to face or through a private email is the best way to respond.
Tip #4: Discover The Root of the Problem
If you find your business is in the wrong, be honest and open about it. Work on a solution. By this, you are showing customers your desire is to do right and make your business better. If you find your business is not to blame, respond politely. State facts and stand up for your business, being careful to not come off as arrogant, dismissive, or condescending. Sometimes, no one is to blame for the issue. Someone may leave you a negative review mistakenly, use it as a chance to win over a potential client or new customer.
Tip #5: Search Out Recurring Issues
If similar issues continue to make their way into your reviews, don’t worry. This can be feedback that can allow your business to learn and grow. Thank the individuals for pointing out issues that can be fixed to make your business better. We like to get ahead of possible issues or concerns by getting feed back from our renters, owners, and investors. This helps us fix issues or potential issues before they are made public.
Our goal is to make our reviewers happy and grow our business. Due to a positive response, you can even change a negative review into an amended review. Mostly importantly, we want to make sure we made an honest effort to listen, understand, and offer solutions to issues from negative reviews.