Building a good reputation for your business can take years. However, a negative comment can make you feel that your company’s reputation has been threatened, all in the space of a minute. Negative comments and reviews online are every business’s worst nightmare. How do you deal with this? Do you reply? What if you just delete the comment and pretend it never happened?

It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is – a crisis management plan will ensure your online response meets the customer’s expectation and maintains your well established reputation.

Read our top tips on how to deal with a negative review below:

Keep your cool

Before going in all guns blazing, stop, take some time to reflect and think about what you are going to do next. Speak to your colleagues, ask them to read the comment before you draft your response. Respond to the comment/review ideally within 24 hours, but certainly no later than 48 hours of it being posted – this shows that you care about your customers.

To delete or not to delete

Although it’s tempting to click delete and forget about it, this isn’t going to solve the issue. Deleting comments shows poor customer service and will reflect badly on the business.

Tone of voice

Keep your response polite and sympathetic – think about how you would like to be spoken to if you were the customer. Be apologetic. Use language like ‘I understand’ or ‘Sorry about that’ to make the customer feel understood and valued.

Right the wrong

If necessary, offer something to fix the problem. This could be a discount code for use on their next purchase, or a replacement product. Not only will this improve customer loyalty, it will boost your reputation.

Make contact

Finally, as well as responding to the issue online, you should contact the customer directly to prove it’s not all for show. If the customer is unhappy with one of your products, speak to them personally to find a solution (no one wants to feel like they are speaking to a chatbot!). Contact them via email, Facebook messenger or by phone, to see what you can do to rebuild the relationship.

Now, take a deep breath, follow these helpful tips and say goodbye to negativity (but, in a polite way!).