So what are you going to do as a local business owners when you've worked so hard to get all of your reviews built up and get this reputation in line and your Google business listing on maps shows all your stars and everything else. And then you get that one bad review, right? Thumbs down, one star, and some story about how terrible you and your business are, or your staff or something like that. So let me give you, first thing to do is take a deep breath. Don't do anything for 24 hours is my, always my advice, because that gives us a chance to calm down and not get reactive. The worst thing you can do is flare up and start firing back at that person online because you're inviting, um, you know, a bigger disaster. Now here's the other thing you should know about negative reviews. 

That's so important. Negative reviews are actually read more than positive reviews. So as a business owner, this presents an amazing opportunity for you to tell your story and what you can do if you do it right, is you can spin this negative situation into an opportunity where you can show the whole world. That's, you know, all of these perspective customers, what you do when things don't go, right, which from the buyer's mentality is almost as important as what you do when things do go, right? So in the back of everybody's mind, there's a little objection to buying from you. And that little objection is what happens. If my order gets screwed up, what happens if my dinner sucks? What happens if I have a problem, uh, as a patient, right? So if you're an off of medical offers, what happens if I don't like my haircut, right? 

What, how are they going to handle it? So there's always that little injection in the back of your mind, this negative review is an opportunity for you to show people that even though they might have that objection in the back of their mind, that your not a bad person and that you're going to take care of them, even if everything goes wrong and it's so important. So one of the things we are going to coach all of our clients to do, and I'm talking about today is how to turn that negative review into a positive situation. So it's just, you're going to spin it. Okay. Now here's, I'm going to go over five quick tips. And then at the bottom of this video, I'm going to give you guys a download to our review response template, which has pre-canned stuff that was designed by us over the years, so that you can come up with a format to respond to almost every situation that you might encounter with negative reviews. 

But the first point is be empathetic and don't get defensive. That's the worst thing you can do is, um, you know, start defending your position and so forth. You've got to be empathetic. And, and if you, if you haven't heard of it, it's like active listening, right? If they say there's this problem, say we acknowledge your problem, right? So don't, don't dismiss it because all you're going to do is piss him off. Okay. Then engage the customer. Alright. So reflect back to them, ask them to call or visit, tell them you want to follow up and so forth, create a personal dialogue. So the goal here is to get this thing off public threads, off your public business listing and get them to create a personal dialogue with you, either by email, at the office or call you or talk in some other way, like DM or whatever, you know, text me or something like that. Okay. 

Saying win, which really means, and let's see, I'm just gonna look right here at my sheet. Um, you're just not gonna be able to help some people. Right. But you know, be honest in your response, but also you need to be able to shut people down when it's just too much. Okay. And people respect that. So what I'm saying here is point number four is know that you do have boundaries as a business owner and that's okay. You don't have to get walked on by people that are like bullying you because they're trying to hold you hostage with this negative review or something. You don't have to put up with that shit, but it doesn't mean you don't be nice empathetic. You still have firm boundaries, you know? No, you can't give them a full refund. For instance, that might just be a boundary or no, you know, they can't come in on Saturday to fix it because you're not open on Saturday. 

Right. So there's going to be some stuff and it's okay to have those boundaries. And it's okay to show everybody that you do have those boundaries. All right. Then the other thing you want to do is remediate the situation, right? So acknowledge where you were wrong, tell them what you're doing to fix it, create a personal dialogue where they can solve it directly with you offline and then offer them something that makes them feel like they're being made whole, right. So a refund, a discount, some sort of offer, or like we'll take care of you next time. Or if you have a friend that we could help let them know that we'll do it for free, whatever that's going to look like. That's a way to smooth things over. Right? So you'll see that a lot with many companies. Like Amazon's a great example of that. 

It's kind of like no questions asked, uh, I call it the a hundred percent happiness guarantee. You know, if somebody is not happy with your service, figure out what's going to make them happy, just make them happy because you know what? The coolest thing is, they leave a negative review, you respond and then they'd do a follow up comment. Hey, so, and so the owner of the company took care of my problem right away. I can't believe the level of customer service. I had a bad experience at first, but man, they really turned it around. Wouldn't that be amazing because you know what that review is going to get read almost more than anything else on all your other positive reviews. And it's going to tell a story about how you're willing to work with people. So don't be afraid of negative reviews. Don't get emotional, wait 24 hours, get our response template below this video. And if you need help with reputation management or anything like that, get ahold of us. We know how to make, you know, build up amazing reputations because it is part of your marketing experience. And of course, if this video helped you inspired you in any way and you liked what you learned, share it, like it hit the bell subscribe center to a friend and catch us on the next one.