Ep. 1 How to Respond to Bad Reviews and Mean Comments

How to be SMART AF with Bad Reviews and Negative Comments

Have you received bad reviews online for your business?

What about negative comments on your social media posts?

Torie Mathis and her co-host Sean Mathis discuss how to respond to online criticism in a way that elevates your business.

There’s a SMART AF way to answer haters online.

Listen or watch the the full episode below:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 01

[00:00:00] Sean: Totally live.

[00:00:01] Torie: Totally live. 

Guess what sean? Email today, A subscriber, not to my list, but acquaint list that said that we should F yourself where the sun don’t shine. Sweet, nice. Huh? People just going to tear shit up. Gap. People are a little harsh online, especially right now. 

[00:00:27] Sean: It’s not hard to be super confident behind a screen. 

[00:00:32] Torie: It’s always like people aren’t sure like what to say with when people do like, even these emails like I never know what to say. Like, are you nice to them? Do you tell them, you know, right away too, I know you deal with these, like, you’re, you’re much better at dealing with these people than I am. What do you do? What do you do on Facebook with these comments that people do? Because you’re the one that answers them. 

[00:00:55] Sean: On Facebook, they’ve gotta be addressed. Thank you can’t tell them to go F themselves, know that you, you can’t do that. 

[00:01:05] Torie: But we have a client that does that, right start some arguments.

[00:01:09] Sean: And we’ve had some in the past that, that like took it to heart and really wanted to argue with them when it’s a, it’s a losing battle. All you got to do is address it really. Respond to it and, you know, sorry, you feel that way. But we try to do everything we can or whatever the case may be and be done with that.

And so that at least people that are reading, it can be like, oh, that guy that left, that reviews it, Dick. But, but the business is like, and at least they acknowledged it. I even. Even if it’s like, an admission one, you know, some, something that somebody is like, not happy that they paid to go into a place. You can, you can be like, look you weren’t happy. You know, come back. I’ll give you a better tour. And if you still don’t like it, I’ll give you your money back. 

[00:02:00] Torie: Okay. So you’re talking about your one star review. You just got, so tell, tell them about like what happened. Cause I saw their view. I told you, okay. Hey, you just got a one star review from some dude, some dominator, dude. I don’t know what his name is. And he said not enough cars, nobody should ever go there. So what did you do? 

[00:02:20] Sean: Yeah, first of all, it’s hard not to get offended. 

[00:02:26] Torie: Okay. Because they’re attacking you and it almost feels like a personal attack. You want people to be happy with your business, obviously. 

[00:02:32] Sean: For sure. And what I did was I’m like, I don’t know what your expectations were. If you look at anything that the museum is like, you’re, you’re not going to go into some, a hundred thousand square foot building and look at 500 cars. Like it’s very obvious. Like that is not what you’re going to be looking at. So not to mention the admission rate to go into this place is $7. Like it could cost $20. What was the vanco. 

[00:03:04] Torie: Oh, my gosh. So we went to it. Wasn’t Vanco. We went in Florida.In Tampa bay to the, what was that? It wasn’t Vanco. It was multi clocks. What is that? What is, what is it? Okay, so we went to that museum and it was, we got a dollar off and it was like $32 or $28. It was a lot. It was, it was a crazy price for a museum. 

[00:03:35] Sean: I think if you really want to go and you’re like, look at that price and how much artwork we saw, you could be a little bummed about it.

[00:03:41] Torie: Okay. But how did you, okay. Cause I think a lot of people, and we’ve had some clients do this, that they get one of these reviews online and they just feel attacked personally. And so they try to talk to the person that has left the review, but that’s not really who you want to respond to when you’re responding, you want to respond so that everybody else that’s reading it.It kind of gets to, it gets a feel for who you are. So how did you do that? 

[00:04:06] Sean: You almost like if you were talking to them in person, you almost talk over them a little bit. So in this particular case, I actually kind of explained what the museum was all about. That way, if anybody read it, they’d go, huh? This guy was really upset.

Didn’t want to go. But the owner of the business is addressing, Hey, this is what the museum all is all about. And so that it cause you you’re going to have disgruntled employees that quit and leave all kinds of, and if they’re not address there, that’s what people are seeing is what’s representing your business.

[00:04:38] Torie: I think usually the rude people that are leaving the reviews, like you can tell these people are pissed off like spelling errors or whatever. You got some judgements already when people are reading the reviews. So I think when the, the business owner takes the higher ground and actually responds in a really polite way and tries to make it better. I know something that I’ve always told clients is take it offline and don’t try to get the back and forth online. Like, like when you did that, I mean, he can contact you, but you don’t want to dialogue between people or an argument back and forth between. 

[00:05:13] Sean: The odds of that even happening though, are slim to none. Like they, they’re not going to respond. That the guy I, I offered to bring him back in and give him a personal tour. I mean, I spent three hours with him. If he wanted, we read everything. I could tell him every single story that, and if he still didn’t like it, I give him his money back. Is his whopping $7. 

[00:05:33] Torie: Well, I guess to get people online though, offline or off the platform that you’re on, that would be more for if somebody is making a bad comment.

What about those? Cause I respond to a few of them. And kind of just pointed people a little bit. Cause usually it’s people judging whatever an advertisement or a post is and not really understanding like what’s going on, but some people just leave some really rude comments. Okay.

[00:05:55] Sean: I think a lot of them too are out there.

They’re one argument they want you to. So what did you say? 

[00:06:01] Torie: You’re just gonna put funny gifts on everything. Just say, just respond like in a hearted kind of. 

[00:06:08] Sean: I mean, Give him an email address, say, look, you know, tell me more in detail with what happened. It’s like, if you honestly have no idea what they’re referring to. Don’t ask them in the comment. Don’t, don’t give them an opportunity to, to say more there, just have them email you, the odds of them emailing you are going to be slim to none. But if they do, and it’s a legitimate thing, at least then you can, you can get it addressed and, and privately, you know, and if you satisfy whatever their concern was or whatever they’re upset about, they might go back and fix that review. 

[00:06:45] Torie: And you’ve had that happen, right. When we had clients. 

[00:06:48] Sean: Even had I don’t remember what client that was, but it was one of our dentists. 

[00:06:52] Torie: We had them and they had a ton of bad reviews. And then we’re like, well, let’s work on what we can do to get you good reviews. But you were like super smart about it. Like you wouldn’t actually contacted everybody that gave a bad review. 

[00:07:02] Sean: 90% of them just deleted the review completely. And what’d you say to him though? It was like, sorry, you know, you like, sorry that you feel it was worth giving a one-star review. What can we do to make it better? 

[00:07:17] Torie: Did you direct direct message him?

What did you, how did you actually contact them? 

[00:07:21] Sean: That was, I think it was like, like Google reviews or something. So you respond as the business owner.

[00:07:26] Torie: You got rid of Facebook reviews. Cause I think they had a couple. And you said some of them were like, I didn’t even know. I gave you a bad review. I’m so sorry.

[00:07:32] Sean: All of them. Somehow it’s apparently it’s easy for people to accidentally review and I’m even with the museum, I’ve gotten reviews that were not for the museum. Not enough bargains. 

[00:07:44] Torie: So obviously it was a wrong review. 

[00:07:46] Sean: And I responded saying, Hey, you know, I don’t think you’re reviewing the right business. Hopefully you went in and saw the museum and can leave a review for that. But as of right now, I think it’s been four days and they haven’t done anything about it and you’re not going to get rid of them all. But. People, if they’re going to read the reviews, they’re going to read the comments and then they can make their own judgment call. It’s going to be pretty obvious. The ones that are like not worth taking any kind of what’s the word? You don’t take it to heart. Like it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t. They’re going to be able to see that. 

[00:08:22] Torie: So I think the biggest mistake that most business owners make though with their reviews online is not responding to them. And you should respond to every single one, whether it’s a good review or a bad review you have to say something to every single one. I think it makes a really big difference on just how everybody’s going to perceive you and kind of get it just for your personality and what you stand for and what you want people to think of you. Great. 

[00:08:47] Sean: Good ones to respond to them all. Like there’s a reason why, if you go in you’re a Google business manager, there is a section there that says respond to reviews that you haven’t responded to because they, they want you to respond to them. And all that does is show that you’re, you’re active with your business.

Like you care what people think, whether it’s good or bad, if it’s good and somebody gives me a five star review, I’m going to be like, you know, awesome. Thank you. You know, hope to see you again. Okay. Even if it’s a four-star review, you know, that’s a good review. You’re asking a lot for somebody to give you a perfect rating.

So even if it’s better than one or two star in them, thank them, you know, thank thanks for giving us even that they took the time to leave it because bottom line, most reviews are going to be negative. People get upset and you want to go leave a review. So the fact that somebody takes the time to leave a positive review, that’s awesome. And you should be asking for those. 

[00:09:41] Torie: And if you have your Google account set up correctly, you get an email every single time, anybody leaves a review. So there’s your opportunity to take care of it right away. Not something that should be left to the end of the week or the end of the month. And you go back, like, it’s something that needs to be done right away.

Cause it’s super easy for somebody in. In your business to take care of that right away. 

[00:10:02] Sean: No excuse.

[00:10:03] Torie: No excuses at all. Do it, respond all your views?