RatePoint

11 Easy Ways to Get Negative Reviews.

Over the past year at RatePoint, we have noticed some common issues that lead to a business getting to a negative review. Fortunately our dispute resolution system helps resolve these, but in an ideal world, we’d like to see businesses strive to reduce the number of negative reviews down to nothing if possible.

Business owners act flabbergasted when they receive a negative review regarding their business. Some of them immediately enter a state resembling the  five-stages of grief, complete with denial and anger, getting all the way down to acceptance. What they don’t understand is many times they bring these negative reviews upon themselves.

Below are eleven common ways to get negative reviews for your business. If you find yourself noticing that your business or employees do any of these things, you could be setting yourself up for trouble!

1. You don’t proactively ask for reviews. When you ask for reviews, they’ll generally be positive, and if there’s an issue, you’ll nail it before it becomes worthy of a negative review. A sign or note posted somewhere is not enough, you much reach out multiple ways including verbally and through e-mail. RatePoint’s Review Request Tool (or simple e-mail tool) is an easy way to accomplish this.
2. You argue with customers. Strong arming a customer or telling them “they’re wrong” will not only guarantee they won’t purchase from you again, it’ll guarantee they’ll be on a mission to make sure everyone knows about it. This can also be defined as “being a jerk.”
3. You’re not courteous. If you treat customers indifferently or as a number, they may see it as a sign of disrespect. Customers have a hard time being mad at someone who is always nice.
4. Promoting products that you don’t have in stock. This is self-explanatory, why are you selling something you don’t have? This happens often to small businesses that don’t have great online-inventory updates.
5. Not quickly alerting a customer to an issue with an order. This is a solid follow-up to #4. With express shipping, people expect to receive an order placed online within a couple of days. Receiving an e-mail a week later that the product is back-ordered probably not only ruined someone’s day, but somebody’s birthday as well. Giving your customer an opportunity to find a different product on your site or elsewhere will save you a customer and a negative review.
6. Confusing policies. Keep it simple. Complex policies can only lead to mis-communication, especially in regards to shipping and refunds. A good policy is one that makes things run smoothly for the business and is fair to the customers. Many business owners ignore the latter, creating policies that make it difficult on the consumer.
7. Ignoring e-mails and phone calls. One good way to get a negative review is to keep ducking the customer. Not only are you missing an opportunity to fix a problem, you’re looking shadier by the minute. For large companies, add “long on-hold time” to this. The problem will not just “go away.”
8. Not being organized. Call it “unintentional ignoring” but if you’re a small business owner, and you’re not organized, stuff ends up slipping through the cracks. Perhaps using Hotmail for your 2,000 e-mails wasn’t the best way to ensure every customer support request was answered.
9. Inconsistency. Do your hours change constantly? Even worse is your business not open when it should be? Does your business run better at different times of the year? When you build customer expectations and don’t meet them, you can expect a negative review.
10. You contact customers in an untimely manner. If there is a problem throughout your business, you should reach-out and explain it as quickly and simply as possible so that you tell them about the problem before they find out on their own. Also, asking for a review or feedback over a year after the fact is guaranteed to hit you with negatives because they’re likely more passionate about their experience.
11. You treat customers differently after they’ve made a purchase. The worse case scenario here is that once someone has paid, you ignore them. Paying customers aren’t necessarily customers for life, in fact they may be more negative in a review because of your change in heart. This especially applies to businesses where you have a monthly payment.

If you find yourself doing several of these things, consider taking a step back and identifying the underlying causes of these issues within your business. By fixing these issues, not only will your customers be more satsified, you’ll retain them, and ultimately boost sales.