You have worked hard for your business’s reputation, but lo and behold, you received a bad online review. It happens. In fact, it happens to the best of businesses. You will never make everyone happy no matter what you do. My grandma used to say, “If you gave some people a bag full of money, they would complain about the bag it came in.” It is hard to accept as a business owner that we couldn’t make a customer happy, but sometimes it just isn’t going to happen. Have you ever had the general rule of thumb that if a customer is happy with your business they will tell one to three people, but if they are not they will tell 10? These days that 10 turns into 10,000 in about one minute flat. Reviews are a powerful tool for consumers. I use them often to determine if I am going to purchase a product, stay at a certain hotel or do business in general with a company. I also read more than one, and I try to weigh the negative and the positive reviews to see if the one or two negatives are those people that wouldn’t be happy anyway. Unfortunately, many consumers see a bad review and take it at face value. In addition, reviews are a part of Google’s search algorithm and it pulls not just Google reviews, but also Facebook, Yelp, and others. Therefore, depending on how many reviews you have, one bad review could cause your ratings to plummet. That is why it is imperative to continually ask good customers to review you online. Think of it like this, you have four great reviews and get one bad, the one bad equals 20% of your reviews. Now, if you have 99 great reviews and get one bad review that is only equal to 1%.
