Mitigating Bad Reviews!

G'day guys,

We just hit over 5500 jobs in 24 months of operation. That's an average of nearly 7 jobs every day.

We do have some negative feedback from customers online but it's a lot less than what it could be. From my calculations we receive 1 negative review for every 1500 jobs we do.

How do we mitigate these bad reviews?

Give the customer what they want. From my experience customers will only leave negative or positive feedback online (unless you request it) if the job is outstandingly bad or outstandingly good (for a long period of time).

Customers are more likely to leave bad feedback than they are to leave good (unless you specifically ask them).

I have had 5+ facebook reviews removed by the customer & stopped countless others from leaving feedback online.

Here's how i did it.

• Address their concerns, i call them and address their concerns, tell them that i empathize with why they're annoyed and let them know that i'm happy to take whatever action within reason to have it rectified.

• Ask them to remove their review. Asking isn't enough, you need to give them a reason. I always let them know that i work very hard and that this business is my livelihood. That's usually enough for an empathetic customer to remove negative feedback.

• Explaining terms and conditions, those terms and conditions you send in the confirmation email have saved my butt so many times. Re-quoting specific terms that have been passed on originally but obviously not read has for me shown the customer that they're being unreasonable and had they read the terms and conditions in the first place perhaps their claim for a re-clean 3 months down the track would have been seen as totally unreasonable.

What are ways you guys manage your online reputation?