This post isn’t for all the perfect sellers out there … it’s for all the ones who’ve made mistakes. The difference between making a mistake, and making a mistake that leads to bad online reviews, is all about reputation management and why it’s important.
Bad online reviews for your business are like pesky spurs in an otherwise functional pair of boots: They can shorten your stride, slow you down and lead to no end of irritation. All it takes is one, bad online review to seriously hamper your projected growth.
Take the case of the Canadian guitarist whose guitar was bashed up by United Airlines. It wasn’t so much that they bashed up his guitar, it was that they refused to apologize and compensate him. He wrote a song about it and made sure several million viewers knew all about it. Then there’s the case of the Colorado restaurant that served a caterpillar with a salad. Instead of making the situation better, they offered the customer half off a dessert. After a couple of really bad online reviews, one of the two restaurants is now closed.
What do these stories have in common? Bad reputation management. Every company makes mistakes, but it’s often how we handle those mistakes that lead people to take the extra step and give a bad review online. These two companies handled these situations badly because they didn’t do what was right … and they didn’t manage their reputation.
eRated’s series on reputation management is all about turning mistakes into learning opportunities, not bad reviews. Here are some tips to manage your mistakes and avoid bad reviews:
- Turning a bad rating into a bad review: So you’ve screwed up. Something went wrong and you shipped your cat to someone instead of a box of DVDs. They’re not happy and they give you a bad rating, like a 2 out of 5. It wasn’t your fault because your husband was distracting you. You’re pissed. You write the buyer and give them hell. The buyer then posts a review: “She sent me the wrong product AND emailed me to give me shit. Don’t buy from her.” Your reaction to the buyer just turned a bad rating into a bad review, which is MUCH worse. Additionally, they have another complaint against you. If you hadn’t done anything in response, you could have minimized the damage. Now, you’ve lost your cat and you have a bad review. So don’t turn a bad rating into a bad review by berating your buyers.
- Failing to rate your buyers. At eRated, we know that the more positive reviews and ratings you get, the more you’re going to sell. It’s a fact. Unfortunately, only 20-40% of buyers leave a review. So how do you get MORE reviews? One way to NOT get reviews is not taking the time to rate your buyers. If they’ve paid you and it’s been a good sale, give them a positive rating or review. If you pat their back, they’ll pat yours’. Even if you’re making a dozen sales a day, take the time to drop ratings for all of them. If you don’t, they’ll be much less like to rate you … which means you’ll have fewer ratings … which means you’ll make less money.
- Shabby shipping. You’ve got eight products to send today. Your kid is whinging about what’s for lunch and you have to feed the baby. You’ve got a lot of balls in the air and you decide to just chuck that book you’ve just sold into an oversized box without any filling and ship. Too bad it was a First Edition you sold for $400.00. It arrives to the buyer bruised like a Canadian hockey player. They are not happy and let you know it by publicly disparaging you for the quality of your product. Bad news for you. It could have been avoided by taking the time to pack properly. If it’s between sending sooner and making sure the product arrives in the best condition, always choose the latter. You can always blame the postman for timing, but you have no one to blame but yourself when it comes to condition.
- Taking too long to respond. Have you ever posted on AirBnB and been hassled by AirBnB admin for not responding to potential buyers? They do that for a reason - because buyers hate not being responded to. If someone contacts you, get back to them, even if you have a better buyer in mind. They may leave a negative review based on your bad response time. Additionally, you may be pissing off possible future buyers. Don’t take too long to respond and always respond to queries. They make smart phones for a reason - take it with you to the cinema and get on the ball.
- Using unreliable parcel delivery. Buyers comment on two things most often: Speed and quality. If your product takes ages to arrive, it will take half that time for them to post a negative review about it. How can you manage this? Use a reliable parcel delivery service you can count on with a reputation as good as yours’ - because your success is tied to theirs’. If you’re in the UK, why not check out our friends over at ParcelBright? They’re as committed to building your reputation as you are.
Don’t let your mistakes turn into bad reviews. Good reputation management is about doing what’s right and making sure your customers leave happy, instead of leaving bad reviews.
Check back next week for eRated’s series on how online sellers can manage their reputation and get more out of their good reviews.
Matt, the scale of positve reviews is so skewed toward negative reviews, which seem to weigh much mor eheavily that positive reviews. For example selling on Amazon if you have 100 no problem transactions, typically 30 buyers after patted on the shoulder will give you a thumbs up and ore or two a neg for no reason. This assumes your perfermance is excellent. Now these two reviewers (buyers) obviously have a probnlem being who they are, maybe having a bad day or just enjoyin the power the Internet gives them. The solution we have is to enable sellers to review and screen buyers in one place http://www.eBuyersReviewed.com. I am not selling the site , which is free by the way, but looking for intelligent ideas of how to better fight buyer fraud or just better manage reviewing buyers. You must admit that if there is a buyer who has been consistently bad, then I would not sell to her/him again. Others may not either if they knew of my experience. Any thoughts on that matter will be greatly appreciated.