It sounds like a delusion, doesn’t it, to claim that Bad Online Reviews can be helpful? We are here to reassure you that this is the case! So, do not be quick to despair and delete the negative reviews you get. Here is how bad online reviews can help your business.
A Chance to Improve is Always Good
One of the first and most obvious ways bad online reviews can help your business is by pointing out things you need to fix. Now, while it is easy to fall for the belief that the more you learn about running a business, the less help and advice you need, this isn’t true. It is easy to grow laser-focused on your goals to the demerit of some or most of your other pursuits.
Want to focus on just improving your products? Okay, but what’s happening with your customer service? Are you trying to improve one type of service you offer? Sure, but can you guarantee the quality of the rest of your services isn’t declining? This constant struggle for quality control is not easy to juggle. But, constructive bad reviews let you take a long, hard look at what needs fixing.
You Can Use Bad Reviews to Interact with Customers
Seething in the corner of your office is one option when you get bad reviews. However, a better choice would be to interact with customers who left those reviews. You can achieve two things by engaging with them and asking them for details of what exactly they went through.
First and foremost, you can acquire more details. Second, and more importantly, you show that you are willing to try and fix things. For instance, moving companies can benefit tremendously from the reviews they received from their previous client, both satisfied and those less than thrilled with their service. As the PR experts from Roadway Moving like to point out, sometimes even putting in all your effort is not worth as much as showing people that you are doing it. They also learned that trying to fix things in silence will make customers feel like they are being ignored. It will upset them more, leaving your business for another brand.
Leaving Bad Reviews up Shows Integrity
How often did you read through nothing but page after page of near-identical five-star reviews and go, ‘huh, this is probably fake’? Probably too many for comfort. For some reason, lots of businesses think that they need to present a perfect front that mustn’t be marred by a single bad review. Quite the opposite to what they hope to achieve, this leaves people convinced they are just deleting the less desirable reviews to hide problems.
Naturally, no one wants to opt for a business that goes out of its way to hide things from its customers. So, while bad reviews can turn people away, they also increase the legitimacy and trustworthiness of your business in the eyes of most. If you are looking for the most efficient ways to improve your business’ credibility, leave your bad reviews up.
Even bad Reviews Help your SEO
Another way bad online reviews can help your business is by boosting your SEO. This is especially the case when starting. If your business is new, you are still desperately trying to improve your SEO score. And while content, site optimization, and other methods are helpful, reviews are essential to your SEO. Not to mention that they are included in Search Engine Results if someone purposefully looks up your business.
If the search turns up no reviews and scant few details, people will typically be discouraged and opt not to do business with you. On the other hand, even bad reviews can give some insight into a business and make you more trustworthy than taking a chance on a complete wildcard. Note that getting reviews is difficult, even for some more popular companies.
Any recognition Can Be Helpful
Similarly, while you do not want to start building up brand recognition solely from bad reviews, you still need to start somewhere! As the saying claims: any publicity is good publicity. At least when you are trying to build up your business. So, here, we fall into a similar point made with the previous SEO-related explanation: as a growing business, you need whatever you can get. You can worry about your image and your reliability in the eyes of the public later. At the start, you need to get your name out there and do it quickly, for which bad reviews can still be helpful.
Bad Reviews Allow you to Sway Public Opinion
The final way bad online reviews can help your business is by offering you a chance for a rebuttal. No matter what kind of business you run, it is impossible to make everyone happy. Even if you believe that customer satisfaction is of utmost importance and do your best to train your staff, some people just go looking for a fight. And those belligerent customers will definitely leave bad reviews just because they can.
If you take the chance to reply to their comments and explain your side of things, then you get all the previous benefits of bad reviews we mentioned, and you get to defend your public image. Of course, this does mean you need to take the time to get to the bottom of things. If a customer complains, don’t be too quick to jump at your employees.
Final Word
Now that you know how bad online reviews can help your business, it should be obvious what to choose between deleting and keeping them. There is not enough justification for going purging your reviews section. The blowback from doing so and the sheer scope of the task make it a fool’s errand. You can’t keep doing it indefinitely, and people will only be more unhappy with you once you stop.
