Negative reviews are frustrating, and it’s natural to want to sweep them under the rug. Putting them out of sight and out of mind can feel good, but it’s a practice that’ll hurt your business. For your best chance at company success, you need to pay attention and care.

Why should you care about a bad review? Because it will impact future sales, not only from that customer but from anyone who sees the review. We know that people are reading more and more reviews before they buy from anyone online.

BrightLocal offers three big stats (of many) to remember about customer service in the digital age:

• 70% of buying experiences are based on how your customer feels like you treat them
• 85% of people will trust an online review as much as a recommendation from friends or family
• 30% of people say responses to reviews play a significant role in how they judge a business

Keep those in mind as we look at ways you can respond to a negative review and hopefully turn the entire situation in your favor. The end goal is changing this to a positive review that can be enhanced later.

Start with a Plan

Bad reviews are going to happen, and it stinks. Someone won’t like something that you do or say or how a product arrives. It’s only a matter of time. We recommend getting your plan together ASAP, especially if your e-commerce store is new. The first 1-star review is the digital equivalent of Cat Stevens’ The First Cut Is the Deepest.

The plan needs to cover who will respond, what they will do, anything they can offer to help ease the complaint, and how this information should get sent back up the chain. A thorough plan ensures you follow the steps to get the information and outcome you want, instead of biting someone’s head off.

If it sounds like a lot to put together, you’re in luck. The rest of this article will tackle those big concerns and help you get the right plan together.

Another must-have for your plan is setting aside specific time to look at the various review sites that could talk about your company. Include designated time to review your social media accounts too. Thanks to automation tools, many small e-commerce stores are loading a month’s worth of tweets and Facebook posts at a single time. That’s a tremendous help, but don’t forget to go back and look at those pages and posts to make sure you’re listening when customers contact you.

Thank and Apologize

In 99.9% of all customer complaints, there’s one way to start: “Thank you for letting us know, we’re sorry that happened.”

Thanking the customer takes ownership of the situation and puts you in control. Your customer service department is acknowledging that something happened, and it implies they are working to resolve the issue.

Saying “sorry” validates their feelings and makes them more receptive to addressing and resolving the problem. It might be all that some customers need to feel better. This is the first step to ease a customer and address a complaint, which is how you move from a 1-star review to (successfully) asking for them to bump you up to a higher rating.

Talk About the Concern

After you establish that you’re listening, ask questions about the problem. If the customer left a detailed review, then address their concerns directly. Take ownership of any problems. If you need more information, this is the time to ask.

For anything that involves sensitive information, even something like an order number, take this to a private channel. That said, you want a public response to the concern that says you’re reviewing it with them. At the end of the resolution process, come back to the public statement — whether tweets, Yelp reviews, or Facebook ratings — and go over the resolution as well as ask if there’s anything else you can do.

The public outreach is for anyone who sees the complaint later. Showing that you resolved the problem makes them more likely to trust you and your products.

You’re Not Always Wrong

Sometimes you need to address the issue because of how your business operates. It isn’t necessarily your fault if the customer is upset about things like price or availability. It’s important if you use special equipment, want to ensure you pay your employees more, or have a practice like always requiring a reservation.

Don’t be snarky in your response — and ignore any snark or sarcasm from the reviewer too. Take your time and explain your business and the lengths you go to running your business right and provide quality products.

Sometimes, their frustration isn’t really about you.

Respond and Resolve

Taking care of the underlying issue for a complaint proves to your customer that you care and will work with them. It also demonstrates this to every other customer who sees the review, social post, tweet, or anywhere else the complaint lives.

To get the benefit of that, you need to ensure you’re actually resolving the issue for the customer. Address their immediate problem and record what happened and how you fixed it. This information is important, and we’ll come back to it at the very end of the process.

One recommendation in this step is to go above and beyond to restore confidence and create a better relationship. If you’re especially successful in resolving the issue in a way that your customer likes, you have a potential to turn them into an advocate for your brand, says Jay Baer in his Hug Your Haters book.

Offer Compensation Accordingly

If you really messed up and the customer is willing to keep working with you, offer some compensation. This is especially true if you offer them something like next-day shipping at an increased cost and then the package is late.

You won’t always need to offer compensation or coupons. Many people will be satisfied with you simply acknowledging their issue. Others, who a study in the Journal of Business Ethics calls “vigilantes,” get high levels of satisfaction just by posting their complaint online, regardless of how things are resolved. This last group isn’t very involved in the resolution process, so there’s little need to provide goodies.

It’s best to take this part of the conversation to private channels to avoid lots of others seeing that a complaint will get them freebies. Compensation is always a wonderful thing to have in your back pocket for those especially bad issues.

Pay Attention: It Can Teach You Real Problems

A complaint can be a one-time issue, but it might also show a larger problem with your business. This is true no matter what type of e-commerce store or business you run. The time we asked you to set aside earlier should include room to review your complaints every week or month. Look for repeat concerns or patterns that might show a larger problem with your operations.

It might show things like:

• Information on your website is not clear.
• Your tax or fees feel “hidden” and customers are upset.
• Things don’t work as people expect, so you need more education on product pages.
• People want faster shipping, or you’ve grown large enough to need an order fulfillment partner.
• Some of your products break often and need to be packed differently.
• Or potential positives like people want more options or are upset that you keep running out of stock.

Give people your attention, and you’ll be able to address their concerns. Taking your time gives you the best chance to solve issues, which can mean greater sales and happier customers going forward.