How do you react to negative online reviews on Google, Trustpilot and other online portals?

Negative reviews on Google and other online portals as an opportunity for your business

Negative reviews can quickly lead to an awkward feeling in the epigastric region. What if those negative reviews scare off new prospects? What if I lose customers and therefore sales as a result? That much has to be said. Negative reviews are no reason to panic and are part of business life. In the same way, even the best soccer team loses a game from time to time.

Negative reviews should be seen as an opportunity. Analyze the situation very carefully and try to put yourself in the customer's position. Is this assessment justified? Can I optimize my service for next time? Try to take these reviews seriously and learn from them.

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No negative review should go uncommented!

In our digital world, it is already absolutely normal for potential prospects to find out more about the service or product online. Google reviews are often the first point of contact. If you don't respond to negative reviews, customers can conclude that the criticism is justified or that you don't take the customer's criticism seriously. This often results in customers choosing to compete.

Reviews are your digital figurehead and optimized listings in Google have a strong impact on the overall success of your business. You should therefore comment factually on the criticism and also publish this statement.

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The best response to negative reviews on Google, Trustpilot and Co.

You should follow these 5 rules when processing negative reviews:

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Try to put yourself in the customer's shoes

Negative reviews or honest feedback is always an opportunity to optimize your own performance. With the help of the feedback, you know which screws you can still turn to provide an even better customer experience. So try to understand exactly why this bad review came about. It may be necessary to ask questions in order to understand the customer even better.

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Stay factual and don't take it personally

It is often recommended that you do not respond directly to the review. Try to wait a few hours before responding to the issue. Stay professional in your choice of words and show empathy.

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Apologize

Even if you think the review isn't justified, publicly apologize to your customer. This shows greatness and shows that you are taking the assessment to heart and have the will to do better in the future.

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Don't justify yourself

Justifications are usually not so well received. Instead, try to understand the facts and reasons for the criticism and show that you'll do better next time.

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Talk to your customer in person

After the public response, try to contact the customer to resolve the issue. Under all circumstances, you want to avoid a public discussion that your interested parties can follow publicly!

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How to collect positive online reviews on Google and Co.

Unfortunately, customers are more likely to leave a review if they had a negative experience. See it as an opportunity and try to learn from it. If you've managed to satisfy your critical customer after all, ask them to change their rating. Ideally, your customer will react to this and change their original negative review to a positive review.

However, you should also focus on proactively collecting positive reviews. Imagine how often you've had a great experience and unfortunately haven't left a review. Often the hurdle is too big or you simply forget it in the very stressful everyday life. Encourage satisfied customers to leave a positive review. If the experience was positive, a happy customer will also be happy to leave a positive review. For example, you can give the relevant customer a business card with a QR code to your Google company profile or send a direct link by email asking for a review. By the way, many positive reviews on Google My Business profiles also increase the ranking in search results. For more helpful tips on how to optimize your Google My Business profile, read our blog article “Google My Business Account: The most important information at a glance”.

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How hellomateo helps you optimize Google reviews

Talking to your customers personally for a review over and over again can be very annoying and unpleasant in the long run. That's why you should look at software that helps you with evaluation management. With the hellomateo communication platform, you can motivate your customers to make an online review via their preferred communication channel. This can be left with just a few clicks.

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Summarizing some of the benefits of hellomateo

• ‍Central user interface: hellomateo combines WhatsApp Business Platform, email, Instagram, SMS and Facebook Messenger in one central inbox. The intuitive user interface includes various tools for efficient customer communication and saves you valuable working time.
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• integrations: With hellomateo, you can use WhatsApp in integrate over 6,000 software programs and fully automated Customer trips create with invitations, order confirmations, shipping information, invoices, and reminders.
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• Newsletter marketing: Send GDPR-compliant Newsletter via WhatsApp or SMS and benefit from opening rates of over 95%.‍
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• Assessment management: hellomateo can Automatically request online reviews from your customers, which boosts your Google ranking and trust in your company.
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• ‍Data protection: hellomateo meets all German and European Data protection requirements and offers end-to-end encryption for secure customer communication.
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• scalability: Our software is suitable for Businesses of all sizes and can be extended indefinitely depending on the package.‍
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• ‍Diverse AI features: Our AI agent can automatically answer customer inquiries in chat, answer calls, help with the formulation of messages and much more.

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With hellomateo, you not only collect more positive Google reviews, but also improve your company's search engine ranking

Since both the number of reviews and the average rating are extremely relevant for Google's algorithm and therefore for the ranking in the results, hellomateo's software offers the opportunity to automatically request reviews from your customers. As a result of this function, you get more impressions on the web and thus significantly increased interest among potential customers. With hellomateo, you can collect authentic reviews, improve your online reputation and create an outstanding customer experience. You can also view, answer and manage your online reviews via hellomateo. And this is just a secondary feature of hellomateo's messaging tool, which bundles all common communication channels in a central inbox. Hellomateo is not only scalable for all company sizes and, in contrast to WhatsApp Business, GDPR-compliant, but also a low-cost provider of WhatsApp API integrations. Feel free to have a look at this Demo video and arrange a free consultation.

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