All businesses aspire to get good reviews from their customers whether the Companies are based on the Internet or some brick-and-mortar establishment. Needless to say, positive reviews will attract more customers and result in higher revenues. And your business expansion can take place quicker too. However, on the other side of the coin lies getting negative reviews; and this can bring your business down or even make it close down completely if damage control is not immediately implemented.
Business Trends in Reputation
As all entrepreneurs know the importance of reputation in their businesses, some malicious ones have opted to use devious methods in trying to get ahead of their competitors. This is done by making fake reviews, meaning negative reviews so that they can put their competitors in a bad light with their customers.
And this is now being done in both online and offline businesses, as the competition can be really tough. So as you can expect, such fake reviews are very detrimental to the health of your business.
Reputation Management
Because of the great impact of negative reviews on businesses, reputation management is now a common aspect in most business strategies. It is always better to nip this thing in the bud, so to speak, so that only minimal damage is done.
And as you can already tell, just one day of having a negative review can have a huge impact on one’s business, as you can lose a great number of customers when there are issues with your products, services, or Company. So the sooner you discover about the negative reviews that are being thrown at you, the more equipped you’ll be in handling it. And the goal is to settle the matter as quickly as possible too.
Identify the Problem
By always monitoring your reputation, you will be able to find out if there are bad reviews being said about your Company. When this happens, you need to make a thorough investigation about the cause of the negative feedback and try to provide a solution for it. If it’s from an unsatisfied customer, for example, you can talk with him or her so that you can make amends with regards to the matter that displeased said, client.
And this situation can often be controlled by providing replacement products or additional services so that the customer can be persuaded to take back the negative review. But of course, the matter will work out differently if it is indeed a fake review, as there’s malicious intent behind it.
What to Do with Fake Reviews
If you are sure that the negative review is done maliciously to ruin your company’s good standing, you can mark the review as spam (assuming that the review is on the Internet). Flagging this as spam will alert other internet users that the review has a “doubtful” nature and that they can’t really depend on it for assessing your company or product. You can then contact the webmaster about this too so that he or she can be alerted of a misleading review on his or her site. And when all else fails, it may be necessary to hire a lawyer to employ legal action on the matter.
