Reputation management. This has been a problem for many businesses. Most recently my previous company I worked at has had this problem. They even had the CEO do some sort of Internet radio interview and talked about the issue. What wasn’t addressed is what causes people to leave bad reviews?
First, you may have a bad product. If I purchased a car and 3 days later I am stranded on the freeway. You bet I will not be happy with the product and want to tell people about it.
Second, bad customer service. I recently had a bad experience with a Dell laptop I ordered. I spent 4 hours on the phone trying to resolve a problem. I had rude customer service reps on top of the frustration I already was feeling. I even wrote a review on hubpage that ranks on the first page results for “Dell XPS 13 review”. Around 50-100 people a day read my review.
Third, fake reviews meant to defraud your company. Above I talked about my previous company getting some bad reviews. They are claiming they are fraudulent reviews possibly left by a competitor. In fact Boostability even had some fake reviews pop up before we have even launched our product. Search for Boostability scam and you will find it.
The first two reasons are easily fixable. Treat people with respect and give good customer service. You will never get a bad post even if you have a crappy product if you make things right with them. Using the example above of the car that broke down. What if the dealer offered me a rental or even agreed to buy the car back. There would be no reason to leave bad feedback.
The third reason is really out of your control. This is a problem lots of customers have. The best thing you can do is respond to the complaint publicly. Be truthful but don’t attack the post. I like to add a little humor into my responses. This lets potential customers know that you want to take care of the issue and you are responsive to complaints.
There is one issue that I am not sure how to deal with. One of our competitors created a review site that they own, so we cannot respond to it. Do a search on “boostability compare”. The top listing is done by a company called Vizad who owns Lotus Jump. I guess they view us as competition, we don’t think they are even in the same league as us. Their solution of creating a fake review site is very unethical and fraudulent. If anyone has a solution, let us know.
