Ep. 10 How to Get Rid of Bad Reviews Online

How to Get Rid of Bad Reviews Online

Has your business received some bad reviews online? Torie Mathis and her co-host Sean talk about how you can get rid of your bad reviews online.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

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SAF 10

[00:00:00] Sean: Maybe they aren’t fresh ingredients. What I’m seeing. 

[00:00:02] Torie: Everybody’s like, wow, these are really fresh ingredients. The freshest ingredients I’ve ever seen.

Hey, welcome to Smart AF I’m your host Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today, so let’s get started. So I have had clients come to us and ask us, how do I get rid of bad reviews online? Like there’s some phone call that you can make to say, you know what that one wasn’t accurate? 

You cannot get rid of bad reviews online, but there are some things that you can do. So my first thing for what you can do is absolutely you can drown things out, bad stuff out with good stuff. So you got some bad reviews. Maybe you have three bad reviews and only three good ones. Try to get like 10 good ones and push those, those bad ones down a little bit.

[00:01:05] Sean: Bottom line is most people that are going to leave a review are probably going to do it because they’re dissatisfied with something. 

[00:01:12] Torie: People leave bad reviews more frequently. 

[00:01:15] Sean: I mean, your good reviews are coming from, you know, the businesses that ask them to leave a review. Hey, how’d you like our service? Will you please leave us a review? And here’s a link to easily do that and then they’ll go. No. Yeah, sure. It was great. 

[00:01:29] Torie: You’re more likely to get more good reviews. If you ask for more good reviews. And even if somebody posts something on their own website or a news story or anything like that, that is bad about your company, the best way to get rid of it is to put new stuff out that is positive. We had a client once call us that the owner of the company had a few bad articles written about it and they wanted to know how to get rid of them. I can’t, a positive campaign and pushing out a lot of information. That’s positive is going to be a way to do that. And they weren’t really willing to do that. They thought that there was just going to be some way that we could magically like click a button and make things go away. 

[00:02:08] Sean: In, in most cases like Google and Facebook and Yelp or TripAdvisor whatever’s relevant for you, most likely it’s going to show the most relevant and recent reviews, which means. Those crappy reviews you got are probably, they might only be a star like one star or if I could give them zero stars, I would. And that’s the review. So it’s real easy to have a more positive review that has more stars. That’s going to be shown when you get when you select show me more relevant reviews, or it’s going to be more recent than a bad review.

So it’s going to be on top again. And then if you’ve, if you’ve got five positive reviews that are. You know, kind of specific to whatever it is they’re positively reviewing you about. And then you got one negative one that’s doesn’t even say anything. It’s just one star. It’s a lot easier for new potential clients to dismiss that one-star review that you can’t really do anything about it, but what you can do, you, you’re not going to get rid of the negative review, but you should be able to respond to that review and just address it and take it offline. Say, sorry, you’re dissatisfied with the service. Please email me or a call to discuss in further detail so we can fix it. And they won’t I almost guarantee you, they will not follow up on that. There’s even a chance at that review was left by accident and they’ll go and remove it.

[00:03:46] Torie: So you’re saying that by making a comment to their review saying, I’m sorry that you felt this way, what can we do to make it right? Here’s my email. Just by leaving that comment, people will remove move the review. 

[00:03:58] Sean: It has happened multiple times for clients of ours that are, I’ve gone into their Google business specifically and cleaned up their one star, two star reviews that were limited information on like the numbers of stars. And some, I don’t know how they do it, but somehow, especially on Facebook, right? Yeah. They were accidents. I didn’t know I was, I didn’t know. I left that review and then, they either remove it or they fix it. Cause they did use the business’s services or whatever the case may be. And I give a better review. 

[00:04:34] Torie: I think people take a look at bad reviews though. And. They don’t put a hundred percent faith in them. Some people are just pissed off. Some people are pissed off at everything. Sometimes there’s a user error. So you could even look at like Amazon products. And if you start going through the reviews, there’s always going to be bad reviews.

And some of them you’re like, who is this person actually leaving the bad review. So though businesses really want those negative reviews removed. I think that it’s just part of the game. I mean, it’s just part of something that’s going to happen, and not freaking out about them and not really worrying so much about them probably is something to consider. 

[00:05:11] Sean: The other side of the spectrum though.

Amazon specifically. Get real reviews. Don’t go and fill it full of fake. Well, 

[00:05:21] Torie: yeah, there are companies and things like that out there that you can pay to get fake reviews and that it’s never a good idea, but you can always ask your actual clients, people who have actually purchased from you for an honest review.

[00:05:39] Sean: It’s so obvious when they’re when they’re assuming they’re super fake reviews. That’s, to me, that’s worse than the one-star review. Now, now it’s, it’s almost like the businesses, like not wanting to provide the best service they can and are trying to cut corners wherever they can so that it makes me feel like, like a pizza joint, you know? And maybe they aren’t fresh ingredients when I’m seeing them. 

[00:06:05] Torie: Everybody’s like, wow, these are really fresh ingredients, the freshest ingredients I’ve ever seen. 

[00:06:12] Sean: I don’t know. 

[00:06:13] Torie: But I think when you just ask for honest reviews from your customers, then it definitely helps to keep them authentic. If you ask people to, you know, to tell about their experience a little bit like you’re not going to get those robotics.

[00:06:30] Sean: The answers on the best, or like show me a picture video example of, of what you’re talking about as far as the review goes. So I can, I can see something real, you know, is it, is it really something that I want to purchase? 

[00:06:44] Torie: I always try to leave nicer reviews because people are quick to leave bad reviews. And that’s another thing that you can always do. People know that you’re a business owner, you work with other companies. And if you go and leave reviews for businesses that you actually go to, then you’re going to have a reciprocal value there that people might come in and they go to your business to leave good reviews as well.

[00:07:05] Sean: Plus just from a feel good standpoint, like it feels better to leave a positive review for another business and to get all upset about something and then fume in and put it all out online on some negative review that may not have anything to do with the business itself. And it could just be that one employee that, you know, hadn’t had a bad day, you know, and you know, it’s not ideal. Yeah. Did you really need to go in and bash the entire business that may then trickle down to, you know, who knows how far that goes, but try to keep it positive. 

[00:07:42] Torie: Keep it positive. But bottom line, you cannot get rid of bad reviews online, but there are things that you can do to be smart about it. Turn them out, drown them out and respond to them.