Dealing With Negative Reviews
OK, so we missed our Reservations, but we are still showing up.
Technical challenges, we overcame!
Transcription:
Jeff Harrison [00:06]: Welcome to reservations. Yes, we’ve missed our reservations. I’m Jeff Harrison.
Andrew McCauley [0012]: I’m Andrew Mccauley.
Jeff Harrison [00:15]: Well today’s perfect topic because we’ve had loads of some type of technical issues to delayed two hours worth of technical issues, but we’re going to talk today about crisis management, but has nothing to do with technical stuff.
Andrew McCauley [00:30]: No.
Jeff Harrison [00:31]: Yesterday, if you missed it, the episode yesterday, we talked about reviews and how important it is never reviewed on your site and how many people, in fact, 94 percent of people make a decision on where to eat based on reviews they found on there, but Andrew what happens if the reviews aren’t good? What if somebody puts in the negative review on your site or on your page? What should you do?
Andrew McCauley [00:56]: Well, a couple of things you could do. Firstly, you cannot get rid of it. Okay. It’s very hard to get rid of that negative review, but you can do a few things and that’s what we want to talk about today. One of them being, make sure that you first respond to the negative reviews. Okay? You do not want to sweep it under the carpet because you cannot, I don’t think I had a question once.
Someone said to me, you know, there was a flood going on in this particular town and they were a hotel and the guys were talking about facebook because this is about a year or two ago and he’s like, you know, I’m not on facebook but I’ve got all these really bad reviews and I don’t want to be on facebook because I don’t want to say these negative reviews. And I said, well, firstly, did you sort the problem? And he said, well, the situation was there was a flood. We were the only pub in town. So he jacked up their prices for cases of beer by five times.
Well, there’s a clue. The people aren’t happy. I say. He said, well, there was a need for the beer. People were willing to pay it, but then a lot of people were angry because they thought we were a profiteering off of situation, which I can’t understand why even think that. But anyway, he said, so what happened was we didn’t want a hurdle. These people are angry, but if I had a facebook page, they would’ve put negative reviews about me. Oh Hello, Mr. pub, owner. They were already doing it regardless of whether it was on your page or not, you should be lucky that they were doing it on your page, which means you can actually answer the issues that were coming up.
Andrew McCauley [02:30]: Okay. You could have put your point of view forward. However, because he didn’t have a facebook page, they were going to do it anyway. They did it on other places that you don’t control and you don’t have the right to answer back. You know, some of these review sites will not let the owner respond, which is even worse for you because now you may have valid, may have had a valid point or you know, maybe you have to helicopter the beer in which cost you thousands of dollars.
So your cost of beer went up. Right. I’m not saying it’ll happen on saying there may have been a valid reason why you had to raise your prices. Those floods in town, you couldn’t get the beer in, but when you did you have to pay extra for it. So there was no. But what I’m trying to say is if you get a negative review on your site, a place that you can control a facebook page or your page, that is good because you know where they are contained. Them all in one spot.
Jeff Harrison [03:17]: Yeah. Let’s take a step back and let’s decide. First of all, you should have a plan in place. I don’t care how big or how little of a business you already have a plan in place. And I would, I would try to judge and say, hey, on what level are these comments are the day a one, which is, you know, not a big deal, but it’s something you didn’t dress or is it a 10? And I would suggest that you have a written statement in line for each one of those. So as something goes up as an example like you know what someone puts on there and I was upset because I got their attendance at night and they closed at 9:00 and that really pissed me off. Right? Okay.
So that’s just a situation that’s not this crisis, but it should still be addressed. Right? So you should have something in place and then you should decide who’s the one that’s going to administer that. The point is there’s a lot of times we see that if we take our businesses, all of us, we take our businesses so personally that when someone puts a review on there, a negative comment on our facebook page, we want to strike out with emotion and that’s the first thing I want you to write down is do something without a motion.
Have a calculate how to position and say, Hey, there’s a standard operating procedure that I should have that I can address this with and say, you know what? Under this situation, you just have to say, I’m going to change the thing from blank to blank closing and then address that and put it in there because what will happen, not only will you tend to sue that person, but you’ll also let the other people in your audience see that, hey, you have compassion.
Jeff Harrison [04:52]: You didn’t waste any time and you got right to it. The second thing you should do is make sure you address it immediately. The more time that gets in there, the more people can jump on that bag way. It’s no different than somebody says, Hey, Andrew, did you hear about so and so and all of a sudden you have a story and somebody else had the story. Next thing you know, there’s a whole wagon full of people with negative comments.
It’s best to get in front of this if you can. Now, as things escalate, Andrew, you want to make sure that you have a really good game plan in place and the number one thing is a few notes. Even if it’s something internal before it becomes external, you want to lead that parade crisis management. [Inaudible] I’m saying, Hey, you know, this will never happen to me, Andrew. Nowadays
Andrew McCauley [05:36]: It can happen all the time. It can be something simple that turns into, escalates into something pretty nasty, and you may not even be. You may not even be working in, You may even just be at the back and something happens real quick up the front and sometimes it’s not even your fault, but because it’s in your establishment, they blame you for it. So it can happen in real quick.
Jeff Harrison [05:57]: Absolutely. And again, you want to determine, hey, who’s the troll? You know, they’re just putting something on there. That’s where that comment hurt your brand or reputation. That’s a one. If it’s not as it goes and escalation and these people are now just hounding and hounding you might want to step in and say, Hey, you know what? I see this problem.
How about we have a conversation offline and take it off of facebook. Don’t have, you know, someone was saying never area your laundry, your dirty laundry in public. Get it offline, get handled or resolved. That would be the number one thing. So I want you to keep in mind today we’re talking about crisis management. If you wait until you’re in the middle of it, it is too late because you’re going to be backpedaling and you look like you’re always counter punching because you’re on the ropes and that’s a bad place to be. So get something in place in advance.
Andrew McCauley [06:45]: There are tools out there actually the lead you or notify you when there are reviews happening on your, on your different sites. To find out, just do a google search. You can find out a review tool. You’ll find that there’s a place that they would say, hey, you’ve just got a new review on Yelp or TripAdvisor or Facebook or Google or whatever it is. They can be good reviews or bad reviews. It just means that you get notified when these reviews happen.
It’s also a good practice to answer reviews. Anyway. I think we said that yesterday show. Going into the going into the reviews, even if it’s a good one. So thanks for sharing your review. We really appreciate your business. That means and that shows other people that you are watching. The reviews, because if they do have an issue, they know that there’s a place I can ask you a question or am I a grievance and you’ll get back to them quickly.
Jeff Harrison [07:31]: That’s right, so that’s really all we have for today Andrew.
Andrew McCauley [07:34]: Pretty much it, one thing I do want to add to that Jeff is get good reviews as well because if you’ve got a balance of one negative review and one good review, it’s a 50- 50 chance that they’re going to be right, but if you’ve got one bad review and 50 good reviews, people are going to say, well, you know, he’s got 50 good ones, five stars and one bad one.
Maybe this person or this particular situation was a one-off. So get out there and be proactive about getting reviews anyway. Get them from you, great customers, get them to do a great review because that means when someone looks at it, you’ll see a five balance and imbalance of good ones versus not good ones.
Jeff Harrison [08:01]: Yeah, If you are married, you know this. If I screw up once to make my wife upset, I’ve got to have at least five good ones to overcome that, five, so I’ve always got stuff. Hope she’s not watching. I’m always got some in my pocket in case I screw up. I know I can come back and say, okay, here are five examples of getting back on track, so if you need to get back on track, rewatch this episode and we’ll see you again. Well actually we’ll see you Monday, on the reservations I’m Jeff Harrison
Andrew McCauley [08:36]: I’m Andrew Mccauley.
Jeff Harrison [08:39]: Have a great weekend. See you later.
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