Still Have Questions?
How to deal with bad reviews on Google or Yelp, by an Ex-Googler.
You just got a bad review on Google, now what?
It happens, a bad review is inevitable, but how should you handle it?
Before anything, I know it stings, and I also know there’s two sides to every story.
It’s hard not to take it personally. That’s why our clients love working with us, because we care as much as you do and we’re going to do everything we can with the tricks we learned working at Google & Yelp to turn this negative to a positive.
First, swallow your pride and acknowledge what they said (if it’s reasonable of course).
Empathy will get you far here, both from the reviewer and the hundreds if not thousands of other people who are going to read this review and are going to make their decision about choosing your business based on not what THEY said, but how YOU responded.
Maybe you were short-staffed, maybe the person was over-served elsewhere and is lashing out out of shame, your chef quit, the power went out, sadly… no one cares.
BUT the content of their review matters SO much less than your answer. Everyone has a off day, people are empathetic to that and the BEST thing you can do is to respond with compassion and a solution if possible.
We recommend having a dedicated email that you can ask them to reach out to directly to resolve. This shows committment from the business to fix the problem and also moves it OFF Google.
Having a real plan to handle these situations is important, if you want them to come back in on a comp (to get them to change their review), let them know that. If you want to just acknowledge it sincerely and move on that works in 99% of situations (but not all).
The reason that answering all reviews good or bad is so important is 2 fold:
The more reviews (good or bad but ideally good), that a business has and that are responded to, the better this is for your SEO.
The more descriptive a review is the better, This is why we have strategies to get more reviews.
Telling your side of the story. Especially when it contradicts or disproves what they said (way too many examples to count), this gives you a real chance to get their review removed completely when you report it because you are now telling the Google Review team that this person might actually be the one violating the terms of service.
This is CRITICAL to how you get bad reviews removed from your Google or Yelp listing.
So to recap, getting a bad review won’t end your business, but not fixing a problem that a legitimate customer told you about will likely lead to MANY more down the road that could have been avoided completely.
Reviews are often the canary in the coal mine of your business.
Yes they can be noisy, but they tell you where you can most improve be it service, quality, experience, vibe, or even staff (I’ve seen a client rightly fire their security company because of the negative interactions they were causing with guests).
Put your pride to the side and handle it. Or if you don’t want to, we’re happy to do it for you and let you know how it goes. This is one of the most overlooked revenue generators for a business, turn your customers into your advertising.