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Key takeaways
- I own a small business and I got my first really nasty one-star review this week.
- I've seen business owner responses go viral for the wrong reasons and I'm terrified of being that guy.
- I want to do whatever I can to make it up to you." And so, you want to look like the business owner that's actually losing sleep, which you are, over what this person said because you don't want them to have this experience.
- We bury it by pummeling your review site with as many positives you can, which not, "Hey, everybody go do that." Instead, it's like, "How can I work into my existing business model, you know, a free expedited service if they leave a review?" We do all these little things afterwards in your actual customer journey so that the flow of new reviews starts to bury the one.
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Full transcript
Locally archived YouTube transcript with timecodes. Speakers are assigned heuristically and may be corrected editorially.
0:00Hey, Alex. I own a small business and I got my first really nasty one-star review this week. The customer said my staff were rude. They weren't. This person was genuinely unreasonable. And now I'm sitting here drafting a response for the third time because every version either sounds defensive or like I'm groveling to someone who doesn't deserve it. I've seen business owner responses go viral for the wrong reasons and I'm terrified of being that guy. Do you respond to every negative review or do you ever just leave them?
0:27>> There's two things that you can do immediately. So, number one is you escalate and then you bury. There's no good response to negative review besides agreeing and upping the ante. The only reason the review exists is in the eye or the court of the general public. And so, you have to say, "Yep, we were rude and you know what? It makes me sick to hear that you had an experience like that. I want to do whatever I can to make it up to you." And so, you want to look like the business owner that's actually losing sleep, which you are, over what this person said because you don't want them to have this experience.
0:59However angry you are, I'm going to get even angrier about the thing. And so, the only option that person has left is to agree with you and try to de-escalate you, which is good. The second thing is we bury it. So, how do we bury it? We bury it by pummeling your review site with as many positives you can, which not, "Hey, everybody go do that." Instead, it's like, "How can I work into my existing business model, you know, a free expedited service if they leave a review?" We do all these little things afterwards in your actual customer journey so that the flow of new reviews starts to bury the one. And if you think about all the way zoomed out, if you were to see a business that has a one five-star review or another business that has a thousand reviews and is doing is a 4.6, the point four that it's missing is from those one-off one-star scenarios, but you just want to go with volume because that at the end of the day is going to be the thing that people believe even more.