Is deleting negative reviews really the best solution for your business? The answer is a resounding no!
There will always be dissatisfied customers, whether it's due to the delay in service from one of your waiters, the cleanliness of one of your hotel rooms, or perhaps even the decor of your establishment.
The fact is: negative reviews will always exist, even if you shift most of your efforts to delivering the best customer experience.
The question here isn't which establishment has the most negative reviews, but which one best knows how to use negative reviews to their advantage.
Negative reviews are an excellent source of opportunities and strategic intelligence for your business. In this post, we've compiled 7 reasons why you shouldn't delete negative reviews and convince yourself that they are essential to the success and development of your business.
1. They help you identify your business's weaknesses
Sometimes, when we're so involved in a project, it's hard to see its weaknesses. And that's where negative reviews come in handy. It's through these evaluations that you can identify weaknesses in your business that you might not have noticed otherwise.
This approach also helps you identify factors and even trends in your offering that are undermining a good experience for your customers, and consequently their satisfaction.
2. These are opportunities to improve the customer experience and delight them.
To benefit from this opportunity, the time it takes to respond to reviews is crucial. Time can be the real difference between transforming your customer's entire experience into something incredible or a minor trauma.
For example, a customer stayed at a hotel, but an unpleasant incident at the hotel restaurant prompted them to leave a negative review on Foursquare.
It turns out that the hotel manages reviews intelligently and was able to identify this guest's review while he was still staying there.
In this case, it was possible to go to the guest's room and apologize for the inconvenience, while also offering a complimentary lunch the next day. This quick action was able to turn the guest's negative impression around in the hotel's favor.
What's more, the attentive and completely unexpected treatment left him enchanted by the staff's attention and dedication. This hotel will definitely be reviewed again on Foursquare. Perhaps it will even receive a better review than it would have had the inconvenience not occurred.
3. They increase your credibility, as they make your business more real.
Negative reviews make your establishment more authentic and help build credibility. Simply because no business is perfect, and consumers know this. If there aren't any complaints in sight, they'll quickly become suspicious.
This research found that 68% of consumers trust Yelp profiles that mixed positive and negative reviews more. The same research also found that consumers suspected something was wrong when viewing profiles that contained only positive reviews.
But be careful: under no circumstances should negative reviews predominate on your profile. The overwhelming majority of reviews your establishment receives should be positive.
👉Check out: How complaints can help you build customer loyalty – Harmo Blog
4. Reduce the risk of frustrating customer expectations
When the experience isn't satisfactory, it means the customer's expectations weren't met. However, when a customer highlights the cons in a review, it helps other consumers align their expectations of your business.
For example, a restaurant customer reviews that there's no dedicated children's area and wasn't thrilled about it. Another customer, searching for a nearby restaurant, reads that review and concludes that it might be a good option for his wife, but not for his children. Alignment of expectations.
👉Check out: What is Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)?
Negative reviews also help your establishment NOT to focus efforts on those who are not your target audience (more expensive customers who bring lower returns) and instead to focus on those with the ideal profile (those who bring higher returns and require less effort).
5. Increases trust by demonstrating commitment to total customer satisfaction
Consumers feel better about companies that respond to their negative reviews. This approach helps emphasize that your establishment is constantly striving to improve its service to its customers.
It also highlights the company's proactive approach to resolving potential issues its customers may encounter. It also highlights the company's commitment to accountability (and its lack of defensiveness).
6. Reduces the volume of trivial negative reviews
One study found that hotels that responded to their reviews regularly saw a decrease in the volume of negative reviews. To explain why, let's do a little imagination exercise.
Imagine visiting your favorite restaurant, where the service and food have always been impeccable—except this time your main course arrives late. You're annoyed and complain about it to your friends at the table.
Seconds later, the restaurant manager comes to your table to make sure everything's okay. For a moment, you consider complaining, but you choose to avoid the confrontation and focus on enjoying the rest of your meal.
Why did you complain to your friends but not to the restaurant manager?
The same thing can happen to a customer who logs onto Tripadvisor, for example, to complain about a business, but ends up giving up. Why?
For the following reason: if the consumer perceives that the establishment is responding to reviews, he or she may reconsider leaving a superficial or unsubstantiated negative review, to avoid a potentially uncomfortable online interaction with the establishment.
Please note: your establishment will not stop receiving complaints, but rather the number of trivial complaints will decrease.
7. Negative reviews now have richer, more detailed comments
According to the same study, customers exposed to management responses were less likely to leave reviews with short or trivial comments. In other words, negative reviews now contain richer feedback, and consequently, more useful for the establishment to extract intelligence from.
With customers less likely to leave frivolous or trivial negative reviews, review sites can provide a more accurate reading of the experience delivered by that establishment, which is good for both the establishment and the consumer.
Conclusion
Of course, negative reviews can be a major headache for you. They expose flaws in your services and, most importantly, can drive away potential customers.
However, these negative reviews are essential to developing your strategy. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, the solution isn't to remove negative reviews, but to know how to make the most of them to grow your business.
And remember: the best way to neutralize negative reviews is to bury them under a bunch of positive reviews.
So, what did you think of the post? Tell us in the comments.
Did this content help you? Then share it and help others too =)
