What To Do When You Get A Bad Review

Caleb Agee 0:00
Before you go off on a tirade down your office, assess your systems, assess your organization, and say, How can we make sure that this experience doesn’t happen ever again? If it’s a reasonable request, obviously. And so I think, I think it’s always good to look internally. When somebody throws an accusation your way you don’t throw it right back. You say, What could I do? What could I have done differently about this?

Brandon Welch 0:31
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I am joined by my co host, Cap carrying Caleb. What that is? A nice hat. Oh, thank

Caleb Agee 0:42
you. Do you like it? It really fits the bill.

Brandon Welch 0:48
This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions to help you eliminate waste and advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. And today’s big dream is all about dealing with the knuckleheads. The knucklehead. What is her? What specific knuckleheads are we talking about? Okay, so

Caleb Agee 1:05
imagine with me, but for real, that hat. It’s you like the

Brandon Welch 1:08
hat? Yeah? Okay, yeah, I had to say it again. You

Caleb Agee 1:11
had to say so it’s four o’clock on a Thursday. You are having a long day at the office. You’re a little bit tired, so you just kind of ready to quit and go home and relate. You can relate. What time is it right now? You get an email subject line reads, Karen just left a review. You hit that open button and you open it and one

Brandon Welch 1:38
star, she’s not caring about your evening, is she? She’s not.

Caleb Agee 1:42
So you get a whole flood of emotions and thoughts and feelings, and all of this comes up all at once. What do you do? That’s the question. It happened to some friends of ours, John Max and Jen at Howard bike park this week. Actually, they have hundreds. They have hundreds of like, awesome reviews, coolest place on the planet, even, actually, with the one star, it still says five point, Google, Google, so got their back, right? It’s good, but, but

Brandon Welch 2:10
this one star phenomenon, this bad review day, right? It’s gonna happen to you. It’s gonna happen, and what are we gonna do about that?

Caleb Agee 2:21
Yeah, I think first we need to address the feelings you have as the business owner, right? You have this moment where you’re like, who’s you know, whose fault? Fight or Flight did did they rocket Albert? Are they lying about me? You know, you kind of feel threatened. Do you feel like you’re slandering your name? And you want to take them to court right away? Absolutely. Let’s call Google. We’ll get this taken down.

Brandon Welch 2:45
Yeah, probably not, probably not. Let’s talk about a different solution, though, and we’re going to offer today assuming that, because you’re listening to this podcast, you are a legendary business, and you do good things for good people, yeah, and you are doing all the other things, right? Let’s just assume you’re not a bad business. I believe that you’re not, because you’re listening to this podcast, and bad businesses wouldn’t listen to this podcast, right? So we’re gonna talk about a process for not only responding to bad reviews and maybe minimizing damage, but actually turning it around to make it a positive thing for you. Yeah, where this can be a brand, building, trust, building positive that actually, if you can, you can believe it will attract more customers to you. So I don’t believe it. Karen was really Karen. Not a lot about good form when she left this bad review. But we’re going to love her anyway. And we have a five step process that I’m going to get to, but first I want to, I want to really dig into this. This is not just hype. This is not just feel good. There is actually a statistic, reality and a and a truth to that bad reviews are actually good for you. There was a study done by a company called invest but they’re just crazy about reviews and customer experience, kind of an authority on that, and they found that a brand with 100% good reviews is actually less trustworthy than one with bad reviews. 95% of consumers say they actually trust a brand a little more with a few crazy customers that they’ve responded to well, but probably even more important than that, 54% of consumers say that they will not buy from a brand they suspect fake reviews from Wow. So if you’re a person who just gets all this hype and you’re guarding this five star review thing, like, you know it’s the gospel, you’re actually probably doing a little bit of disservice to your business, because I want to see what it’s like when you don’t have a good day. I want to see what it’s like when your employees had a bad day and they gave a bad experience. Something about us as consumers wants that recourse. Yeah, and the best way to prove that without actually having to go through it, that we’re safe is to watch somebody else have gone through it. It’s going. To happen? Yep, and then watch a business rise to the occasion and do the unexpected thing and make up for it. Yeah, it

Caleb Agee 5:07
kind of boils down to authenticity, which we were really longing for in each other. But you want to see that in an organization as well, that human factor, that it’s not perfect. They do have. They do make mistakes, because humans make, I mean, I don’t. Our business is never obviously, obviously not. But then that’s cool. If you do, how do you handle it when you make that mistake? What happens?

Brandon Welch 5:29
So, yeah, I think I made a mistake as recently as last night, like, nine o’clock, yeah.

Caleb Agee 5:35
Oh no. I was like, What are you talking about? Oh yeah.

Brandon Welch 5:39
Okay. So rest assured, put your talents away. Look at this, just from a marketing perspective, as an opportunity, not a bad thing. Yeah, and we’re gonna go through a five part solution that’s called empathize, apologize, communicate values, ask for forgiveness and provide a solution. This is how you should be constructing your reviews. But first, let’s talk about what you shouldn’t do. Yeah, what should you not do? Think that’s really important. It’s probably Yeah, it’s probably more important than our formula. But yeah, we’re gonna give you that to do instead. But what should you not do? Yeah, you

Caleb Agee 6:17
should not go. The first thing everybody does is they go investigate that customer, right? They’re like, Oh, Johnny left that review. Oh, let me look him up in our CRM real quick. I remember Johnny. We went to that you know, he was at that house. We did this service for this. I bet he’s missing teeth, yeah, you know. And you start he’s got a criminal record. You start to try to remember exactly who interacted with Johnny, what happened? And then, usually you’re trying to self validate you are. Yeah, and say, No, I, we didn’t do that. Yeah, Johnny’s crazy. What’s he thinking? You know, and even wash his car.

Brandon Welch 6:51
Who does he think he is? So

Caleb Agee 6:54
the first thing you don’t want to share a detailed, your own detailed version of the story, in self defense, self preservation. You don’t. You’re meeting them exactly where they met you. You want to, kind of, you don’t want to go to their level, yes, which is down and probably degrading. It doesn’t feel good. You don’t want to throw the stone right back at them. Yeah, that’s not going to work.

Brandon Welch 7:17
So yeah, that’s Don’t, don’t, don’t argue with an idiot. They’ll drag you down with them, or they’ll, they’ll beat you Sorry. What do you don’t argue with an idiot?

Caleb Agee 7:26
Yeah, give it to me.

Brandon Welch 7:28
Totally went blank. We gotta leave all look at you. Look at you arguing with an idiot, right? Don’t argue with an idiot. They’ll bring you down to level and beat you with your ex, with experience, or something like that. You guys know what I’m saying this podcast, so we’re not going to show our ugly side publicly. The worst thing you could do is go, is start your response with the defense. There are times when it’s just completely slanderous, and if it was like in the, in the realm of, like, just character, you know, assassination, yeah, you would maybe go there, and we’ll talk about some ways to sneak that in here in just a minute. But the public, if it’s, if it’s just a man, this person said this, this person did this. They had dirty bathrooms, or they had, you know, whatever, off day you’re having because you’re going to have one. Yep, we don’t want to defend that and so, so that’s the thing you don’t want to do first. Don’t show your ugly side and don’t try to recount the events that’s probably that’s that’s probably never going to serve you. So what are we going to do instead? We go back to that five part formula, empathize is number one. Want to talk about some psychology on that. A second, apologize. Number two, communicate values, ask for forgiveness and provide a solution. And at the end of this, we’re going to demonstrate this in real time with a real review that is out there on the internet for you to look at. But let’s talk about empathy. So Teddy Roosevelt was famous for saying, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yeah, I heard that on frankly Friday, frankly Friday last week, right? Yeah, you guys should listen to, frankly Friday, if you haven’t. Dean Gracio, See also said, people don’t buy when they understand you. They buy when they feel understood. And so as a demonstration of empathy, empathy is I’m in your shoes looking at the world from your point of view. That’s the kindest, most authentic gesture of trust building and really likability you can do as a company in both your advertising and as well as responses and internal communication like this. So we’re gonna empathize. We’re gonna say, Man that is so frustrating, not don’t apologize yet. We’re gonna stop off at validation. Yep, that must be really bad. Man, that must have been really maddening. That is so sad. Um. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Yeah, I would be frustrated if I were you too. I don’t blame you for posting this review. Yeah, wow. And man, you you do that, and it’s not like you popped their balloon. You didn’t throw a knife at him. You just literally took the air out of it. You said, Let me have that. Let me share that burden with you. Yeah, even if this is your company, possibly quite even if it’s you the one they’re mad at, yeah, and you’re saying, you know, even, even if it’s something a little crazy, you’re going, I can understand how you would feel that way. Sometimes you need to go a little more neutral. If they’re just totally irate or, you know, sometimes on drugs or whatever you got to go, I can understand how you would feel that way. That’s also a form of empathy, yeah? And once you get that out of the way, and you can do that in do that in a sentence or two, you say simply, like, the fastest thing you can do is just say, I’m so sorry that happened. Yep. Um, I apologize. We apologize on behalf of my team. We would like to offer our sincerest apologies. Um, you do those two things, the public is already going, Wow, this is a real person. Wow. I can’t believe a business allowed somebody to talk about them this way, and they turned around kindness. Yeah? Something about that in some book that’s been around for a long time, yeah? Turn the other cheek, right? Yeah. So you have not only that person, probably, if they read this, you defuse that person. You have the entire world in your hands going, what are they going to say next? Because you, you just neutralize that. It was like vinegar and you threw baking soda on. You just neutralize it. It just went away, right? Yep. Then this is where you get to talk about you. You communicate your values. We believe in blank and you’re hopefully offering something that is the opposite of what they’ve experienced. Yep, we believe every family should feel comfortable in our facilities. Yep, we believe in cleanliness. We believe that speedy service is the fastest way to show gratitude for our business. Yeah. And hopefully you have these values that are, you know, on your wall somewhere, or you’ve already established, and you can just reach into your bucket, and so it ties into your branding, yeah. But even if you don’t, even if you don’t have these, like, chiseled value side note, you should get a copy of the Maven marketer and learn how to write your value statements. But you’re talking about something we believe. We believe in a bigger world. We’re better than that. Yeah, I have a higher standard than that. I’m the owner, and by the way, if you can voice this as an owner or a leader, yes, coming down to the level of the customer, it’s even more personal. It’s so more, so much more personal. Yeah, I’ve seen some companies with like mega, mega like CEOs, like hundreds of employees and the owner, or maybe the PR person, but they sign it as the owner, and the owner endorses the statement, and you just say, Man, when I built this company, when I started this company, I never imagined this experience happening. Yeah, this is not my vision, and we can do better. Yeah, you’re saying we are better. We can do better. We are better than this, yeah. And so the world’s going huh? The only conclusion from a witnessing third party of this is that this company had a bad day. They’re being human about it. They’re owning it, yep. And so any negativity that came and doubt that came with this company, because this one bad review, or maybe even a handful of bad reviews, you just completely neutralized. So you’ve neutralized the view with the neutralized the bad review with those first three steps. Now we’re going to turn it into a positive. We’re going to turn it into where you’re the most endearing company on the list because of what you’re going to do next. You’re going to ask for forgiveness. We hope you can forgive this mistake and know that it will be better next time. We hope that you can write this off as a happenstance, rare event for our team. Yeah, and we’re not going see, look at all the other hundreds of positive reviews. We’re not doing that. We’re not shoving it in their face. We’re saying it is our hope that you could understand this is an isolated event. Please forgive us. Please forgive us for this mistake. Then you’re going to provide a solution, and you’re going to be unreasonably generous, yeah? When you do this, yeah, I hope I don’t have to lay out the math for you on why you should be unreasonably generous of more than just money back. But not only am I gonna take care of this experience, I’m gonna give you the best experience you could possibly have next time. Yeah, or I’d like to send you and your family, if you can’t do it on a product level, just because it’s either you’re

Caleb Agee 14:46
selling you can’t give them a new roof. You can make it better.

Brandon Welch 14:51
They may not deserve it, right? There’s a line better. Yeah, you can make it better. But something that is universally generous is a gift card to a really nice. Restaurant, great. I’d like to send you and your family to the warming house my treat. And that might be like a, you know, hundreds of dollars experience for you. Yeah, the math there is the loss of one customer probably more than cost you what that did, what that did? Yeah, there’s some math. I believe it was done by the tarp study. Some years ago. I read about it. Tim Miles is like a brilliant customer service guy. By the way, you submit a question this week, we’re gonna send you a copy of Tim miles original book called Good company. You want to be a better company. You got to read this book, like 100 chapters on great customer experience and making people just overwhelm but something you wrote about in there was share worthy experience. So when an experience is as expected, that is not share worthy it was as expected when it crosses the threshold of unexpected, either on the unexpected bad or unexpected good, that is when we start to share it. And there was some math in there that basically something like one out of 13 people will actually complain when they have a bad experience. But for every person that complains, they’ve told, like, multiples of their friends, so by the time you’ve heard one complaint, it represents 13 others times 10 other friends, 15 other friends. Yeah. And so you’ve got 150 200 negative impressions on your business, and what is that costing you? So dissolve that, turn it around and like mad, I’m hunting these customers down, and they’re crazy, man, most of these one stars are crazy. They are not right. They are not just. But imagine if you can turn that person into a fan. What kind of power that provides for you? Marketing wise.

Caleb Agee 16:53
Oh, yeah, yeah. So I think we have this, this really careful, you know, process to follow. We actually had an example in here. Did you want to we’re gonna

Brandon Welch 17:08
go through the example. Okay, yeah, I break it down, empathize, apologize, communicate values, ask for forgiveness, and provide a solution that is how you want to respond to your reviews. Let’s put it into work in real time. Okay, so we picked a movie theater, just a local movie theater, something neutral, right? Yeah, and old James. We’re not going to mention the name of this movie theater. They actually have lots of really, really great reviews. I’ve been there. This is a place in our town. But for the sake of this example, James says, read it to us.

Caleb Agee 17:40
We got out of seeing this movie at your theater. I If I could give it a review of zero stars, I would we used to love going going to your theater, because it was adults only, no little kids running around. Well, apparently they changed their policies and allow all ages in the suites. There was a little girl who was loud the whole time, and parents didn’t do anything. The adults next to us were loud and on their phones. The lady in front of us was loudly laughing. Isn’t this

Brandon Welch 18:12
a comedy? I wonder if it was

Caleb Agee 18:13
a funny movie. Yeah, James, we’ll keep going. We We have never had a worse experience at the movies, so sad that they changed their policy. This used to be a magical fun place I look forward to go, because it was adults only in the movie experience. But not anymore. The food was good, though. Oh,

Brandon Welch 18:31
hero, it got no good things, but the food was good. And from

Caleb Agee 18:36
what I hear of the movie, yeah, sorry, he said, from what I could hear of the movie, it was

Brandon Welch 18:41
good. So the business owners going, Well, James, maybe you shouldn’t come to comedies. Well, maybe, maybe you could buy out the whole theater next time, and you can have a private showing. That’s, that’s what the average business owner would start pulling their claws out and going, How dare this guy, you know, yeah, just berate my business like this. But what the business owner should do instead is empathize, apologize, communicate values, ask for forgiveness, and provide a solution. So let’s, let’s break down James, obviously a little cray. Cray, he went to a comedy and he’s getting mad about people laughing. The kid was there, but hey, it’s a family theater. Get over it, man. Get over yourself. But we’re going to show James a little love, some unreasonable love, and this is what it would sound like, James, that is so frustrating. Movies are a special getaway, and you should be able to enjoy them without distractions. That’s empathy. And the person who’s like wanting to defend this business is going, I would never say that, but trust me, when you do this, the public is going to see you real. James, That’s so frustrating, man, I would leave a bad review too, if I were you, then we’re gonna apologize simply, we’re sorry that happened. That’s it. We’re so sorry that happened. Yeah. Communicate values. This is important. We believe everyone who visits family flicks I made up. I made that up for this theater name. We believe everyone who visits family flicks should have a safe and comfortable experience where we are hopeful you can forgive us and know that this is not the experience we stand behind. We are reviewing our policies and your feedback with our team today. We can and will do better. That’s what everybody wants, right? Yep, you’re just saying all this person was doing when they were screaming is going, I wanted to be different. And you’re going, I agree with you. We want it to be different too. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 20:29
And you worked out the values and the forgiveness inside of those, those two sentences, yes, yeah.

Brandon Welch 20:35
Sorry, I put those so we communicated the values by saying we we believe everyone who visits family Flix should have a safe and comfortable experience. We are hopeful you can forgive us this forgiveness part, and know this is not the experience we stand behind. Communicate values and ask for forgiveness, right? Then we’re gonna provide a solution. Now this would obviously be easy for a movie theater to do. I would love to provide you with a complimentary movie and snacks for you and your family. So he probably came, looks like he came with one person. And we’re gonna say, let’s give you tickets for your whole family. Yeah, unreasonably generous, right? Yep. And then the solution you need to be specific. Please call me directly, and man, if you can provide some sort of number, I’m not saying it has to be your cell. That’s kind of dangerous in today’s age, but if you can provide a direct office number or some sort of like no frills, go through a phone tree, you know, hide behind the receptionist, type response, yeah. Or please email me directly. Or I’m sending you a direct message. If it’s on Facebook, sure, I would love to personally handle this and make sure you get taken care of. Please call me directly at 91946534348675309.

We are eager to make this right. Even better. I am eager to make this right. Yeah, don’t go light on this. Don’t say please call me if you have any more concerns. That’s lame, and then end it with a thank you, right? Thank you for choosing to spend your evening with us. We are determined to make your next one a delight. You neutralize the bad you poured so much good on it, they’re going to be mad at how well you handle this. If you want to truly get back at him, they’re gonna, they’re going kill it with kindness. So you kill it with kindness, they’re gonna, they’ll probably be so mad and defeated that they’ll probably delete the review. They may take you up on the offer, and if they do, awesome, great. Don’t like deliver it wholeheartedly. But there’s a I’ve done this a lot of times, and when you respond with that kind of tact publicly, somebody is just going to they’re realizing they cannot beat you on a communication level or an intelligence level, yeah, and they realize they really don’t have a laid to stand on for being unreasonably frustrated with you.

Caleb Agee 22:55
Yeah, couple things I think, you know, as you get that bomb, as it lands in your inbox, we always want to remember to empathize so we can diffuse it carefully, don’t kick it down the street. But one other thing we do need to make sure is that we do take ownership of it. You know, there are the crazies here, and they show up more often than the than the non crazies, but before you go off on a tirade down your office, assess your systems, assess your organization, and say, How can we make sure that this experience doesn’t happen ever again? If it’s a reasonable request, obviously, and so I think, I think it’s always good to look internally. When somebody throws an accusation your way, you don’t throw it right back. You say, What could I do? What could I have done differently about this? Yeah, that’s,

Brandon Welch 23:48
that’s, that’s something Caleb is so good at, is looking at a situation for what it is. And then there was no failure. There was only win or learn. Those are the outcomes. Yeah. And we go, Caleb goes directly into those modes, and you do it, brings that back to our team, yeah? And says, hey, yeah, what? Let’s make sure this never happens again, yeah. And from that’s, that’s a whole nother episode we could do on the benefits of failure, right? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 24:18
yeah. So there’s an internal response there. And absolutely bring it to your team. Say, Hey guys, this is a real thing. Somebody’s having a problem. What are we gonna do about it?

Brandon Welch 24:26
Absolutely So empathize, apologize, communicate values, ask for forgiveness, provide a solution. A couple of the questions we’ve had around this topic, should I hire a lawyer? Almost never? Should you worry about that pile good reviews on top of it, get to work making your experience so good that the the rest of the world will go, this lady’s obviously crazy, or this guy’s obviously crazy, James T at the local movie theater, if it, if it’s if they’re disclosing private information, absolutely you got. Go through Google’s channels, and in my experience, Google will take something down that is that is threatening or violent in nature, so that you could probably get that taken care of by Google. Just go through their review response, by the way, probably should have mentioned this to anybody listening. If this happens on your Google review page, which is probably most often where it’s happening in your Google business dashboard is where you respond to these so google.com, forward, slash business. You can claim your listing. You can get all the control to respond to people that do this to you. But there’s also a button in there that says, you know, dispute this review. I’ve had very, very, very little luck saying this person is not a customer. That’s one of the options. I’m not saying it won’t happen or it can’t happen. Sometimes they’ll take it down, but usually Google doesn’t respond to that. Obviously, the review up. But if you say this is violent, and their text robots determined to be violent or otherwise slanderous or against a person in a hateful way, not just about the business, like specifically calling somebody out where it’s dangerous. Yeah, they’ll, they’ll take that down pretty quick. And so maybe our empathize, apologize, communicate values wouldn’t apply to that. But, um, other questions I get are, can I can I get a company to create good reviews. For me, you’re going to get found out. It’s a dangerous you can run, but you can’t hide, and so that’ll that’ll always kill you. I actually had a customer who didn’t do that, but they got so many good reviews in a short amount of time, Google actually shut the listing down because they thought they were fake, yeah, and they removed this client completely from the internet and the maps, and you just don’t want that on your back. So even if a company promises to be able to do that the right way, just don’t do it. Google says in their policies don’t incentivize people at all to do reviews. If it’s a one on one basis, I’m okay with doing it. I’m like, hey, I’ll give you an ice cream cone if you’ll leave me a review. Yeah, and you don’t have to tell them what kind of review, but selectively asking for good reviews and making that a, you know, I’ll give you this if you’ll take the time to do that sort of thing. Don’t do it in a digital format, because Google can actually find that, especially if it’s on your website. Uh, I’ve heard stories of people getting shut down for that, so um, but if you have any other questions on reviews, or possibly if you’d even like us to help craft a response for you in a unique situation, I know everybody’s listening, going, Yeah, but I have this one unique situation. Probably just empathize, apologize, communicate values, ask for forgiveness and provide a solution. But we will be willing to take a challenge on that. Yeah, bring it on. Um, why haven’t aliens visited Earth yet?

Caleb Agee 27:50
Who says they haven’t? It was

Brandon Welch 27:52
only rated one star. I think that’s the episode. Man,

Caleb Agee 27:58
that’s it, if, if there’s an active takeaway from this, because the passive thing is to wait for a bad review to come. Hopefully you’re not sitting around waiting for that, but the active thing, go get the good reviews. Right? Absolutely. Go get them. Because if you don’t have any sort of process in place that you are actively asking for reviews from your satisfied customers, you’re missing out, and it’s gonna hurt a lot more when you only have 10 and that one star shows up absolutely but when you have 100 and you’re 50

Brandon Welch 28:26
deep, yeah, yeah, that’s just the drop in the bucket, exactly. So thank you guys so much for listening. We have like 1500 views on one of our videos this week. It’s incredible. And by the way, this is episode number 10. It’s number 10. Where’s your party hat? You got your party hat on? Hat on? Yeah? Ham horn. Thank you so much for listening. This has been an absolute blast. We are nowhere near even started yet. Yeah, we have, we have some exciting stuff coming up with an audio book and also another episode or another interview style episode that I think is going to be announced very soon. And if you’re not subscribing to the emails, go to Frank and maven.com and sign up for our emails, because there’s a lot of extra bonuses. We’ll link to the, you know, studies and stuff we mentioned in here. We’ll link to extra tools. We’ll link to maybe copies of our book. Who knows? Yeah, and also from other experts that we trust and admire are learning from. So yeah, appreciate you guys who have listened with us. Thus far. We are just getting started, and this is the place we will be back every Monday answering your marketing and advertising questions, because

Caleb Agee 29:38
marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy live.

Brandon Welch 29:41
Have a great week.