Chapter 11: Combating Negative Reviews While you may be making every effort to prevent your clients from ever leaving a negative review, you can’t please everyone, and you might have to do damage control against a negative review. Even if whatever led someone to leave a negative review about you was outside of your control, that doesn’t mean you won’t be blamed for it. That’s why it’s important to know how to respond if a negative review surfaces. Address the Reviewwith the Client If you don’t address a negative review directly, you have no control over the effect it could have on anyone who sees it — and on your business in general. The first thing you should do when you see a negative review online is to reach out to the person who left it. I recommend calling because emails and text messages can easily be ignored or misinterpreted. If you are blindsided by a negative review, find out from the client what prompted them to leave it. If the issue was outside of your control or something they never communicated to you at the time you were working with them, do your best to talk it out with them and make them understand that the issue wasn’t something you could have prevented or foreseen. Many times, if you take the time to understand and offer to try to rectify a concern, you can politely ask your past clients to remove their unfavorable review. Explain the impact a negative review can have on your business, and offer to make it up to them some way — perhaps by offering to take them to dinner or by buying them tickets to a sporting event or concert. If you did do something that justified a negative review, own up to it, apologize, and again, offer to make up for it in an impactful way. Once you’ve mended your relationship with the client, you can then ask them to remove the negative review. Address the Review Online If you’ve reached out to your former clients and they won’t respond to you, address the review on whichever platform it was posted. Say something like: Hi [Client], I’m so sorry to hear that you weren’t completely satisfied with my services. I have been trying to reach you so we can discuss and rectify the problem, but I have been unable to reach you.
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