When dealing with negative feedback, you must fight your natural urge to retaliate. You should not attempt to quickly dispose of it or respond aggressively. You should remain calm and analyze it, so that you can cultivate the most effective approach.
1. Negative Feedback on Social Media
A customer posted a negative review about Starbucks on Facebook soon after their launch in India, and it stayed on their page and gathered around 5,200 likes and 300 comments. Starbucks did not respond, and ultimately deleted the comment in panic. This resulted in an even bigger reaction from the public, and the company was criticized across multiple social media platforms.
When this happens to your company, the last thing you want to do is delete the feedback. This action shows that you are in the wrong and that you just want to take the easy way out in order to solve your problem. Customers don’t like companies that take the easy way out, especially when it has to do with unsatisfactory experiences with their services or products.
Instead, acknowledge the feedback and show gratitude for alerting you to the problem that you were planning to resolve. Remember, the customer is always right. They don’t care about how you feel, so your thoughts are irrelevant in this situation.
Let them know when and how you plan to solve the problem; this will put them at ease and make them feel like you care, which will mostly likely help you retain that client and many more.
2. Negative Media Coverage
When a comment or situation becomes overwhelming, your brand is in jeopardy. Do not hesitate to hire some professional help. ORM companies are required in this type of circumstance. An example of such a situation is the oil spill case for British Petroleum (BP) that resulted in public outrage, and online media channels were full of negative articles about the company and the damage done to the environment.
As a result, all the search engine results for “oil spill” and “British Petroleum” were dominated by negative reviews. We all know that it is not possible to completely remove information from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. What BP did to handle this situation to defend their reputation was commendable—-they ran a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign.
BP started showing paid results on Google and Yahoo that dominated the organic results for keywords like “oil spill” and “Gulf disaster.” In this way they were able to promote links of their choice above the links that published negative content about them. These results talked about the remedial steps being taken by BP to help restore the environment. They took full responsibility and started rebuilding the image of their company. They allocated over $11,000 per day to PPC campaigns.
A PPC campaign can help diminish bad publicity for your brand; this is done by knowing the key terms and words to look out for. Blue Ocean Global Technology has the experience and the knowledge to assist anyone needing this type of professional service.
3. Competitor’s Sabotage Attempt or Disappointed Client
One of the worst events that can take place for your company is if an old employee, angry customer, or a “hater” decides to share their negative thoughts about your company on RipOffReport.com. This becomes the principal search hit that appears when someone types in your company name + spam while looking for negative reviews. This is a nearly irreversible harmful act, and it is very tough to overcome.
Your best bet would be to try to find out who it was that uploaded the bad review. If a review is posted by an account that has not been verified, it can most likely be removed. RipOffReport.com has launched a program that verifies users that are posting negative reviews, and they contact the company in question 14 days before the post is published. This gives the company a fair chance to straighten out any misunderstandings between them and the customer.
Tips for Solutions
If the issue or review is not on a big stage such as RipOffReports.com, they may be easier to get rid of. Here are a few tips for dealing with negative reviews popping up on Google searches.
1. Organize the Response
Be “short and sweet” when you respond to negative publicity. Avoid using the company name, because you do not want it to pop up on search engines. “Our company” can be used instead.
2. Your Best Offense Is Defense for Negative Reviews
A PPC campaign is a necessary step to take, but it is not a long-term solution. You must expand and promote a huge campaign using your company’s PR department to distribute positive publicity about your brand. This content must specifically cancel out the negative keywords used in your negative reviews. This allows your positive content to appear first, above the negative ones, and makes it harder for people looking for your flaws and bad reviews.
A reputation management expert will know how to strategically compose the content to include the beneficial keywords.
3. Consistently Share Your Brand
Any search query will show one result per domain; make sure you promote your name consistently so that it is your content that appears first. Consistently repeat your brand name with your content, which will activate the search engine spiders that will place you higher in searches based on your company.
4. Diligence Is the Mother of Good Luck
The best thing you can do is to prepare for any problems that you may encounter.
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