Surely every business owner knows bad reviews can hurt their company, but how you deal with the review matters even more. Reading reviews is part of the customer experience that every potential customer goes through, even before purchasing a product or service.
Though it would be a different matter altogether if all the negative reviews were genuine. In many cases, people use bots or fake accounts to leave untrue comments to bring a business’s ratings down.
Here’s what you should know about bad reviews and what they can do to your company.
Determine if the Review is Fake or Not
If you have a somewhat empty comment section and want to add some positive comments, fake reviews may seem like a good idea. But, posting fake positive reviews to outweigh the negative ones isn’t the best solution.
Some customers may feel doubtful after reading too many promotional-sounding 5-Star ratings on your website. Your company could be penalized in this case if you post fake reviews and get caught.
If you want to determine whether the users posting negative reviews on your site are fake, search the user’s profile and look at their commenting history on other sites. If all of the comments they posted are negative and similar, then it means they are most likely fake.
Negative Effects of Fake Reviews
Keep yourself calm and don’t overreact over a few negative comments. One false comment can’t threaten your company. Replying to the review in a bad tone or threatening them may give other visitors a bad impression of your company.
Replying positively and calling them out on their lie with proof is the best way to deal with a fake negative review. But if left unchecked, they can be detrimental to your business in many ways.
Destroy Your Reputation
When your customers read bad and negative comments on your website, they may lose the trust that you’ve built with them. This will lower your reputation in the eyes of your customers and will likely cause your website rating to go down.
In order to remove negative content from Google search, you need to search for the user that left the bad review and check the type of reviews they comment on other websites. If all of them seem negative and unusually targeted, you can report the user and get their review deleted.
Loss Of Revenue and Profits
No matter how many positive reviews you might have, a large enough number of negative reviews can make customers worry and have them think twice before purchasing from your business. More customers being driven away also means less money coming in.
It only gets worse for small businesses since they don’t have a large customer base or reputation so visitors solely depend on their review section to get an idea of them.
Encouraging Positive Reviews
You should encourage your customers to post positive reviews to increase your overall rating. There are tons of strategies you can use to attain these reviews from your valued customers, like making it easy for them to leave reviews by sending Emails when they’ve purchased your product or service.
With the help of these positive comments, you can fill your website with various certified positive reviews and outweigh the negative comments.