Marketing has become a hard science in the age of countable clicks, automated posting, and SEO. But there are elements of publicizing your business that will always require a human touch. Part of this human factor is your ideas: coming up with fresh, appealing, and even innovative ways to connect with your customers. But a crucial part is your personality: how you respond to compliments, feedback, and complaints.
Yep, in the internet epoch your complaints ‘book’ is public property. The more you try to sweep negative feedback under the carpet, the bigger the noise your unhappy customer will make. Deal with a genuine bad review with openness, positivity, and good humor, and you can actually turn it into a positive publicity event.
The two types of fake review
But that still leaves one more factor to deal with: fake reviews. There are two types of fake review. Positive reviews are comments that you leave on your own website, or pay someone else to leave to make your business look good. We can deal with that topic in three words: don’t do it.
Fake negative reviews are usually left by your competitors. It makes sense, in theory: every year, 97% of us look online for a local merchant or service, and 73% of us reckon that positive reviews make us trust a local business more. And we’ll usually read six or seven reviews before we make up our mind.
So it just takes a single bad review to plant a seed of doubt in the average consumer’s mind and get them searching for an alternative to your service.
The difference between real and fake negative reviews
A genuine bad review is something you can try to turn in your favor. But fake bad reviews are a phenomenon that you need to nip in the bud. However, you need to know which you’re dealing with, as if you apply the wrong coping strategy to the wrong type of review, you’ll likely make things worse. That’s because a fake reviewer will happily rebuff all your efforts at ‘making things right’ (don’t feed the troll!) and a genuine bad reviewer will only be made angrier if you ignore or report them.
Here’s how to tell the difference. First, assess the tone. A genuine complainant is either looking for some sort of resolution, or to warn other customers – so they will usually be quite reasonable. A fake reviewer is only interested in tarnishing your reputation or provoking you into an argument, so they may use more inflammatory language. The phony will also be less specific about their experience – since they didn’t actually have one!
Don’t make your assessment on these factors alone. Have a look at who the reviewer claims to be, too. Click through to their profile and see what it reveals. If it’s a Facebook account with hardly any activity, it may have been set up just to make this complaint. If it’s on Amazon or another marketplace, you can likely find out what other reviews they’ve left. A ton of bad reviews left in a short period of time is a pretty good indicator that somebody’s paying them to spread bad will. A ton of good reviews for a single competitor likewise suggests that something is awry.
If in doubt, politely follow up the bad review as though it were real, and see what the response is. Once you get a dialogue going, it should be easier to tell if they’re genuine or not.
How to deal with a phony
Once you’ve identified a fake bad review, it’s time to neutralize it. That means reporting it to the platform owners (for example Yell or Facebook) and then taking your own steps to manage the bad mark on your reputation.
How to report a fake review differs from platform to platform, but usually there will be a little flag or menu icon near the top of the review that you can click to bring up your options. This new infographic on dealing with fake negative reviews contains step-by-step instructions for reporting a phony on several of the most common sites.
Managing the review yourself is a bit more complex. You shouldn’t just ‘call out’ a faker in the replies – you might be wrong! And you need, in all cases, to remain calm, civil, and professional. Customers who read the fake review will also read your reply. So begin by politely saying that you can’t verify the reviewer’s complaint: something like “we have no record or recollection of your experience.” And offer them the chance to get in touch with you directly (by email or phone) to discuss a resolution. If they’re fake, they will either disappear at this point or blow their cover by responding with abuse.
Following up
The next step is to set the record straight with your genuine customers. You’ll never know exactly who saw the review while it was up, so it’s often best to be completely transparent. Use social media to make a post referring to the incident. Try to be light and humorous, and don’t refer to any real people by naming or tagging them. Just let your customers know the review(s) they saw were fake, and that genuine customers recognize your true quality!
Invite your readers to leave their own positive reviews. As long as they’re genuine, they will improve your reputation and dilute any bad reviews – fake or otherwise – that linger on your profile.
Good marketing is about more than paid advertisements and cookie-cutter testimonies – it’s about developing your reputation and relationship with your customers and followers. Be true to yourself, vigilant towards phonies, and professional under all circumstances, and you’re pretty well set for the rest to fall into place.
