What if one day you open Google, and see negative feedback about your business flashing like a neon sign on the top? That even sounds so frightening, but unfortunately, it can happen!
If you are running a business, it means that you are serving a target population, and they will surely have an opinion about your services.
Though all businesses try to ensure that ‘opinion’ is good, however, sometimes all strategies go wrong. Despite delivering the best, sticking to the premium quality standards and standing out from other competitors, your customers can still give negative feedback.
Yes, that can happen – in fact, it happens!
Remember that there isn’t anything wrong in getting negative feedback if they are constructive and intended to help you improve your services.
But the real trick lies in your strategy to deal with your services.
Obviously, you can’t reply to negative feedback harshly (unless you are okay with seeing an anti-fan club against your business on social media – which you surely are not!) and you also can’t leave these negative feedbacks un-responded.
So, what should you do? The best practice is to have a pre-planned strategy to handle these negative feedbacks to turn unhappy customers into happy ones.
Acknowledge that Customer Is Right
The first step towards preparing yourself to deal with a negative comment is by acknowledging that the customer is right.
No matter whether the customer is wrong or not, and how much wrong you are feeling, acknowledge the customer. Remember that the customer is the king, and the king is always right!
Today’s knowledged consumers understand the product they are consuming – sometimes better than the producer does, so it is better to take the negative feedback constructively and accept it.
Apologize and Ask If You Can Help:
Next, it is better to address the issue instead of leaving it on a dangling end.
Drop the idea that you should avoid addressing the issue as it will get buried with the passage of time. Your simple apology and kind words can boost your image beyond your imagination and show your genuine concern towards your customer.
Be Real
Customers want to hear from, not from your automatic machine that delivers the same message to everyone. So, take a real and authentic tone while dealing with the customer rather than adopting a robotic tone.
The best way is to be polite and honest, and keep the marketing style out of the question. You can see a few examples here for inspiration.
h3>Contact the Customer Offline
Besides responding to the customer’s concern online, you should also contact them offline. Getting all-personal is the best way to show you are genuinely concerned and it is not an online show for reputation management.
Send them an email, or call them if possible, and ask how you can compensate further. You never know, your kind gesture can also entice them to change their review.
Business is all about the right decision at the right time, and customers are the most crucial and sensitive part of the business. Be careful while dealing with them!
About the Author
Kashif Chaudhary began writing as a professional on his personal blog and then discovered his true calling, which is writing about technology and news in general. He is a technical writer, author, and blogger since 2012. An industry watcher that stays on top of the latest features, extremely passionate about juicy tech news and everything related to gadgets.
