9 Tips for Handling Negative Online Reviews
You know the feeling. That sudden gut punch that takes your breath away as you read the words: an unexpected, out of context, negative review right there in black and white on the public internet. It’s hardly surprising that your first, instinctive response might be to defend, to robustly fight back against the unfairness.
Except it isn’t always unfair. Things do go wrong, and customers are entitled to share their own experiences. No business is perfect or immune to criticism, but there must be a better way to respond to negative online reviews. And there is.
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The power and danger of an online review
Customer reviews function as social proof and provide an alternative perspective to the unavoidably biased views of the company who is selling the product or service in question.
All things being equal, research consistently shows, a positive review is more trusted than a company making the same claim on its own, and negative reviews are even more influential in making purchasing decisions.
How companies respond publicly to negative reviews is therefore critical. Potential customers are reading reviews both to avoid making a costly mistake and to build their confidence that they are making a good choice.
When you are responding to feedback in public, as opposed to calling or emailing a customer directly, there is a different dynamic at play. You’re writing for the customer in question, but also for the benefit of people reading your response at any time in the future.
Writing in front of a potentially global audience can be scary, but it’s also an opportunity to show people how your business responds when something goes wrong. Publicity, good and bad, is a magnifying force, so your responses are worth putting real time into.
The first step in any response is to understand at a high level what you’re dealing with.
The different types of negative reviews
Not all bad reviews are equal. Identifying which type of review you are dealing with should shape your response. We can categorize them into four groups, listed here in order of both frequency and priority for response.
Truthful negative reviews: A customer who has had a poor experience is sharing their perspective with honest intentions. These are the ones you should prioritize first.
Unclear negative reviews: Sometimes the review does not contain enough information for you to determine what happened. Respond to these to ask the customer to contact you with details so you can take action.
False negative reviews (from a customer): A real customer, but one who is misrepresenting the facts in order to create pressure. For example, a person who demands a refund they clearly do not qualify for. These are the ones that can end in ugly public fights, so be careful!
False negative reviews (fraudulent): A negative review posted by someone who was never a customer and is trying to cause trouble. You should respond with professional calm and clarity, typically with a pre-planned answer.
Before you fire off a response to a negative review, take a breath, re-read the review, and see if you can tell which category it falls into. In most cases, the legitimate reviews will be obvious; you can confirm the customer exists in your own order systems and then proceed to offer help.
Real customers with unclear or even false reviews are a little murkier. Once you’ve confirmed it is a real customer, you’ll need to do some digging to understand what happened (see tip two below).
Be cautious about labeling fraudulent reviews; a lack of evidence doesn’t mean the person is not a real customer. Do your best to find them and, if it is still unclear, err on the side of asking for more information first.
9 tips for responding to negative online reviews
Writing, especially online, is a limited medium. It lacks all the body language, vocal tone, and relationship context that can add so much useful information to the recipient of your message. What feels to you like a completely fair but passionate defense of your business might read to someone else as unfounded aggression.
So before we get into the tips, think deeply about who would be the best person to respond to them. There’s no shame in letting someone less emotionally entwined with the business be the person who replies to public reviews.
If you’re up to the challenge, here are my top nine tips for responding to negative online reviews.
1. Have a system for alerting you about negative reviews
You can’t respond if you haven’t seen it. Set up a listening post system that emails you when new reviews are added wherever they typically appear for your industry. Booking.com, G2: you’ll know which sites apply. Set aside some time to read reviews each week so nothing major is missed.
You can do that manually with a simple set of bookmarked pages you review, but most review platforms also offer tools to help you read and manage your reviews. You can typically set up email alerts to bring new reviews automatically into your queues to manage.
Review sites also offer their own tools: G2 has a review dashboard and Booking.com has a guest reviews menu, for example, and if you are dealing with larger volumes, there are services like Reputation that can aggregate reviews across the web.
2. Investigate before you respond publicly
In most cases, you’ll have some additional information internally about the customer, their transaction with you, and any prior communications. Take the time to get the full picture before you respond (though be careful never to reveal publicly anything you don’t have permission to share).
That might mean reviewing your order management system to confirm dates, times, and order details and checking your help desk for any customer communication that happened prior to the review.
If you’re dealing with a physical service, speak to staff members who may have interacted with the customer to get their perspective. Collate all those facts into a single document so that everyone on your team has the full picture before they respond to the customer in public or in private.
3. Avoid being defensive
It’s natural to feel defensive, but it’s never helpful to sound that way. Validate their concerns, remain curious and open, avoid using “you” language that makes assumptions about the customer.
Examples of defensive language
| Category | Example defensive language |
|---|---|
Justifying problems or over-explaining things that are not the customer’s issue | “We’ve been overwhelmed with so many orders for this exciting new release, and…” |
Minimizing a customer’s personal experience | “We have hundreds of customers who love this product, and none of them…” |
Blame-shifting to the customer | “If you had read the terms and conditions, you would know…” |
Writing in a passive-aggressive tone | “If you had brought this to our attention privately first…” |
The temptation is always present, especially when the customer truly is at fault, but avoiding sounding defensive will come off a lot better to the future readers who don’t have the full context of the situation.
There are situations in which sounding defensive is unavoidable, such as when a review is an outright lie, but as a general rule, it is best to leave defensive language out and stay direct but positive.
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4. Take positive action
Wherever possible, do something to make it better. If they have a legitimate complaint you can resolve, take that step. Reach out privately to offer help, make a policy clarification for the future, whatever makes sense. It shows a willingness to improve and helps upset people feel heard.
When you have taken action, post a public response to the review so other readers can see it. For example “We’re so sorry to hear about your experience. We've let you down. Our support team has emailed you today, and we will make sure we get you exactly what you ordered as soon as possible.”
5. Don’t let the hate flow through you
Even if the complaint is an unfounded, invented problem raised by someone who was never a customer, it does no good to go on the attack. You know it’s false, but other people may not. Keep calm and carry on. If you have relevant information you can share, do so in a matter-of-fact way.
Make it clear you’re willing to help, but also that you are not necessarily accepting the situation as stated in the complaint. For example: “We aren’t able to find a record of your stay, please reach out to us from the address you used to book so we can investigate it properly for you.”
If the review is on a third-party site, you may have access to mark a complaint as potentially false. Google’s Review Management Tool is one example. Collect your information, and make use of those tools appropriately.
6. Write for the public audience
Think about the person considering your business who comes across this negative review. How do you want them to feel about you? You’re replying to them as much as to the customer in question.
7. Follow up privately, update publicly
The best case for a negative review is that you can identify the customer, reach out to them privately, and figure out how you can address their concerns. Once it is resolved to mutual satisfaction, respond to their original review to let people know you’ve taken action. If you’re very lucky, your customer will also update their review.
8. Be Elsa, let it go
You don’t have to dig right into every review, positive or negative. Sometimes you can just thank people for their feedback and let them know they’ve been heard. Particularly in the case of mild criticism or mediocre praise, just showing that you’re paying attention is enough.
9. Never go full Streisand*
Whatever you do, job number one of responding to a negative review is to not make things worse. Don’t be like this Australian motel who, in trying to squash a legitimate, quite mild review from a customer, ended up making national news and having to shut down in order to recover their business.
*The Streisand Effect is named after Barbara Streisand's attempt to hide information about her house when its location was revealed on a website documenting coastal erosion. Her lawsuit attempting to alter the very rarely visited page resulted instead in the page being viewed hundreds of thousands of times as the lawsuit went viral.
Hey there, you’re a 1 star
Nobody wants to see a negative review, but if you stay in business long enough, they are inevitable. An average rating of 4.2/5 with some genuine negative reviews is much more convincing to an experienced online shopper than purely 5/5 ratings. Those well-handled complaints will build trust in the minds of potential customers, showing them that even if things go poorly, you stand behind your products and service, and where possible, you will make things right.
Nobody needs you to love them, just don’t leave those crucial negative reviews hanging.
Mathew Patterson
A veteran support leader, Mat spent years teaching better online support at Help Scout before founding More Human Content. Subscribe to The Supportive or find him on LinkedIn.
