How NOT to Deal with Negative Google Reviews

Feb 17
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3
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Google Reviews

We’ve done multiple webinars on Google reviews. We’ve done webinars for literally thousands of people on them. In 2021 more than 13,000 people attended our webinars about Google reviews. We’ve trained about GMB pages, trained about Google reviews basics, how to get more reviews, and even why people should care about Google reviews.

But you know what people ask about more than anything?

How to deal with negative Google reviews.

That’s the #1 topic we get asked about, and it isn’t close.

Small businesses—dealerships, hardware stores, restaurants, law firms, wedding venues, bridal shops, and everyone in between—are horrified, terrified, paralyzed with the fear of getting bad Google reviews.

In this blog post we’ll cover the things you should NOT do when you get a negative Google review. In the past we’ve covered what you should do. This post will be a series of DO NOT statements.

What NOT to Do When You Get a Negative Google Review

DO NOT ignore it.

There is a natural tendency to ignore a negative review, to pass it off as ‘the reviewer is crazy’ or ‘the reviewer is mean’ or ‘the reviewer doesn’t know what they’re talking about’. But resist the urge to do this. DO NOT ignore the review. You’ve got to get to the bottom of what happened. Look inward at your business and determine if there was something you could have done better, if there was something that you overlooked.

Maybe your team was rude to the customer. Maybe you didn’t communicate effectively. Maybe you overcharged them or charged a fee they weren’t expecting.

Maybe you aren’t perfect.

Pay attention to the reviews, fix the things that are wrong in your business. DO NOT ignore bad reviews. Ignoring them doesn’t fix the problems that your business has. Try to learn from negative reviews and see if they can drive you and your team to improvement.

DO NOT overreact.

This is the opposite of the point we just made. Don’t flip out, overreact and start firing people. Here’s some news: the customers IS NOT always right. Sometimes they’re wrong, sometimes they’re rude, and sometimes they just needed to let off some steam.

Some bad reviews can’t be avoided. Some people just get up on the wrong side of the bed and if they aren’t leaving you a bad review, they’re leaving the taco stand down the street or the Walgreens on the corner a bad review. To quote Alfred from the Dark Knight trilogy— some people just want to watch the world burn.

So DO NOT overreact. Figure out what happened for sure. Get to the bottom of the situation. But don’t overreact.

DO NOT start a public argument on Google.

The natural reaction for many people is to reply to the Google review with rage, righteous indignation, and with your best argument.

Don’t do this. It’s a bad idea. Starting a public argument with a crazy person on the internet very rarely goes well (we’ve seen various examples of this in the last couple of years on social media). But seriously, don’t do this. No good will come of you replying to the Google review with insults, arguments, or even justifications. Nothing good will come of it.

Don’t do it.

DO NOT fail to reply.  

You’ve got reply to the review. That’s vital. You shouldn’t—as we said above—reply with anger or in an effort to start a public argument. But you HAVE TO reply. It’s critically important that you reply.

Reply with something like this: “I can understand why you’re frustrated. (Note that you didn’t apologize). My name is McKay, I’m the owner. I want to make this right. Text our main business number (which you have enabled because you’re smart and use Kenect!) and I’ll reply personally. We’ll get this sorted out.”

Conclusion

The key to negative reviews is really simple: go get more positive reviews. That’s vital.

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