Negative Reviews: Turning Lemons Into Lemonade
Word-of-mouth has always been a powerful marketing tool, especially for small businesses. Today with ease and convenience of the internet, customers automatically turn to sites like Yelp, Google, and your flower shop to voice their opinions.
When you see a bad review about your flower shop, the worst thing you can do is to get frustrated and not reply. Learn why it's important to respond to negative reviews and start turning your sour lemons into sweet lemonade!
WHY You Should Respond
- Build Trust and Confidence
Even if you only have a few bad reviews on Yelp or on your website, it could still mean the loss of a sale if you don't respond to them. Customers trust online reviews and are looking to see how you have handled situations in the past. When you put in the effort to address the problem and provide a solution, you show that your flower shop takes every customer experience seriously.
- Help Your Local Search Engine Ranking
Customers love online reviews and so do local search engines. Many business owners don't know that search engines actually like to see a few negative reviews. Having a mixture of good and bad reviews shows that you are a real business interacting with real customers!
- The Customer is Looking to BUY
When a customer starts to look at online reviews about your flower shop, they have already decided that they want to purchase flowers. Now they are in the process of selecting what business they want to buy from. Be the flower shop to score the sale by responding to your negative reviews!
HOW You Should Respond
- Respond Promptly
Make it a habit to check your reviews everyday or every few days. Responding promptly and professionally shows that you are dedicated to providing excellent customer service. Your customers will appreciate you listening and being proactive in solving the problem.
- Always Apologize
Even if the customer is wrong and at fault, it's still in your best interest to apologize. Many times simply listening to a customer and showing them that you care, will resolve the problem.
- Offer to Right the Wrong
In your response you need to include what steps are being taken to resolve the problem. Most of the time in order to resolve a problem you will need more information from the customer. Encourage the customer to contact you directly. Conclude your response with a sentence like this, "I would like to hear more about your experience and learn how I can better serve you. Please contact me at your convenience." Always include your name, title and either a telephone number or email at the end of your response. This is also a great way to take the conversation offline.
Here is an excellent example of how to respond professionally to a negative review.
Photo by: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/help-with-yelp...
Remember, while you can't control what people post online, you do have control over the outcome of a negative review.
If you have an FSN website, click the link below to learn how you can easily manage and respond to your online reviews!