{"id":169489,"date":"2018-07-05T22:08:46","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T02:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=169489"},"modified":"2018-07-05T22:08:46","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T02:08:46","slug":"how-should-businesses-respond-to-bad-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/05\/how-should-businesses-respond-to-bad-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"How should businesses respond to bad reviews?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cThis<\/a>
\u201cThis is something you simply can’t ignore,\u201d said Columbia Business School professor Jeremy Kagan. \u201cThe best defence is a good offence.\u201d (Photo<\/a> by Christophe BENOIT\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 A bad review can easily damage the reputation of a small business. Failing to address negative social media and online posts could make it worse.<\/p>\n

Yelp.com recently won a case in California where an aggrieved law firm tried to force it to remove negative posts. That, the state’s supreme court ruled, would be a legal no-no. While it’s a victory for freedom-of-speech advocates, many business owners say they are vulnerable to anyone who chooses to spread falsehoods because there are no consequences for doing so.<\/p>\n

There are several measures a business can take to respond to negative reviews to mitigate any potential damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something you simply can’t ignore,\u201d said Columbia Business School professor Jeremy Kagan. \u201cThe best defence is a good offence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are some key points for business owners:<\/p>\n

ASK HAPPY CUSTOMERS TO POST REVIEWS OF THEIR EXPERIENCE<\/p>\n

It’s important to be proactive and have staff ask customers to post their experience. The offensive part of this strategy involves having a base of good reviews from happy customers. It’s even more important because people who are upset are usually more motivated, Kagan said.<\/p>\n

That can leave a skewed picture of a business. A solid base of good reviews will help give a potential customer a broader view.<\/p>\n

RESPOND IMMEDIATELY AND POLITELY<\/p>\n

People want to know that the owner is professional and cares about fixing legitimate problems. Simple things, like saying \u201cI’m very sorry you didn’t enjoy\u201d the meal or product can go a long way with potential new customers checking out your reviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will often find that you’re playing to the audience, which is sort of neutral,\u201d Kagan said.<\/p>\n

PROVIDE A FACTUAL REBUTTAL<\/p>\n

While owners should acknowledge a person’s feelings, there are some issues where a factual rebuttal is necessary.<\/p>\n

For a restaurant, this could include providing a link to a health department grade or report if somebody falsely accuses the restaurant of being unclean. For some companies, it could mean posting a statement on steps being taken to improve a product or service.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re not necessarily going to fix an upset person,\u201d Kagan said. \u201cWhat you can do is limit the impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 A bad review can easily damage the reputation of a small business. Failing to address negative social …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":169495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[52775,52777,52778,52776],"class_list":["post-169489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","tag-bad-review","tag-columbia-business-school","tag-jeremy-kagan","tag-yelp-com","mauthors-the-associated-press","mauthors-damian-j-troise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}