Online marketing is a dog-eat-dog world; it’s survival of the fittest. Judging businesses by their social media presence is the norm and where there’s bad press, business suffers. Customers certainly don’t hold back and negative reviews are a given.
Don’t sweep them under the carpet or ignore them. It’ll aggravate the problem and you certainly won’t get any points for customer service. Prospects pay just as much attention to the bad reviews as they do the good.
Get the relevant people together to discuss the negative comments and how to proceed. It’s easier to have a policy on how to handle negative reviews in the first place. Some companies have a hierarchy that issues can be escalated through, whereas smaller businesses might have only one or two people handling the whole operation. Publicly respond to the review at least. This way customers will see you responded to the complaint and offered a chance to discuss it further. It’s better to show you care.
What about the trolls? Fake reviews? A common, dirty black-hat practice is when competitors hire someone off a freelance site to leave bad reviews by the dozens. Sometimes by the hundreds. It happened to a well-established jeweller in America, with devastating results. Their 5-star rating plummeted down to a 2-star in a matter of minutes. All thanks to a freelancer creating fake profiles and leaving fake one star reviews.
Facebook’s community guidelines are in place to prevent malicious behaviour, like bullying and vulgar language. You can report a negative review if it ticks either of these boxes, or the review is about a service your business doesn’t provide.
You can’t delete the review.
You can certainly disable the reviews section if trolls keep attacking your page, but once a low star rating is given, it can only be brought back up with good reviews.
Receiving negative feedback is unavoidable, unless you happen to provide spectacular service. When the bad review does come, though, don’t try to delete because you can’t. Don’t ignore it, because that won’t solve the whole problem. Report the reviews if they’re bullying, abusive, or done by trolls, otherwise just keep calm and learn how to do better next time.
