By Vance Neely
One of the most fulfilling things about doing business can be making your customers happy. When you know you’re the reason people are walking away from you with a smile on their faces, that is a great feeling. An added perk is that you know others will ask them about their smile and they’ll share the great experience they had doing business with you. Word will spread about your superior customer service and your business will thrive. Right? Well, not always. On occasion, you’re not going to make your clients happy. Sometimes, those clients will leave bad reviews. What do you do in when this happens?
The Real World
It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking no one’s going to pay attention to one bad review. However, a much better business practice is one where you take responsibility for what happened and try to make it right. Take, for example, one customer who posted recently on Joybird reviews. This person was unhappy with the product they received. The Joybird reviews furniture customer service representative didn’t ignore the negative review, though. Instead, they contacted the customer directly, did what they could to replace the faulty product and then asked the customer to update their review on the website. What other businesses can learn from this example is to take the negative review and work to make it a positive through good customer service.
When It’s Not Your Fault
Sometimes, you’re not culpable for your customer’s dissatisfaction. That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, though. If the client is doing business with your company and a third party causes them to be unhappy, you should still facilitate the best possible outcome. You bridge the gap between your customer and your supplier by encouraging your provider to make things right. If they won’t, do what you can for the client and rethink your relationship with that contractor.
A negative review isn’t the end of the world if you treat it as the middle of the story.
