Handling Negative Online Reviews of Your Business

IT's really great to get your name out there on sites like "Yelp", "Yahoo!", "Google Business", etc. , but with it comes a price. Negative reviews. Many that aren't even legit complaints, but just plain rude for the sake of it. Not to mention the amount of times I have seen people give glowing reviews, yet still mark it by accident as a 1 star review out of 5 stars.

According to Boston-based strategy and communication agency Cone: "80 percent of consumers said they changed their minds about purchases based on negative information they found online."

That seems a bit high, but may not be that far off. I personally do a lot of research online for things I buy, or places I visit. Not typically for stores, or restaurants I go to "offline" since I don't live in a metropolis, and there just aren't that many places out there I haven't heard the real breakdown on already. For places like Amazon, or when I buy online though, these reviews are pretty important for me. Especially Amazon when I am buying something that has 4-5 different competitors for the same thing. Price might not be an issue, but those reviews steer me to the best one of the 5 most definitely. So if I see positive reviews when looking for flowers for our anniversary on a comparison site I will likely lean towards that store.

Waht can you do about it if you get bad reviews? Personally, I wouldn't want to list on places that didn't allow a business response to reviews. If it is a bad review with legit complaints I'd want to be able to "make it right" and take care of the customer. IF it was a BS complaint, I'd still want my say. Here's a few more tips.