Reviews drive purchasing decisions. Research shows that positive online reviews increase ecommerce consumer trust, while negative reviews discourage purchases.
Reviews also provide strategic value.
“Customer reviews are pure gold,” says Jake Miller, founder of ecommerce coffee brand Fellow, on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “Every entrepreneur and any employee should obsess over what feedback you’re getting from your customers.”
Poor reviews offer just as many lessons for astute business owners as positive ones. Here’s how brands like Fellow use positive and negative reviews to build relationships, earn more satisfied customers, and improve their business’s reputation online.
Why do customers leave negative reviews?
Receiving feedback is part of running a business—and it includes both negative reviews and positive ones. The number one driver of negative reviews is a gap between expectation and reality: Nearly three-quarters of consumers indicate that they’d submit a negative review if disappointed by product or service quality. Other common motivators include negative overall experiences and inaccurate product or service descriptions.
At Fellow, Jake notes that consumers who are passionate about the product can be quick to criticize, and their high level of emotional investment sometimes manifests in complaints.
“People are obsessed with coffee, and with that comes the good and the bad,” he says. “With that comes the passion when things don’t go perfectly. I’ve never written a thousand-word complaint about a toaster, but we’ve received thousand-word complaints about our grinder. I just love that we design in a space where we can have people who are that passionate about what we do.”
Why are negative reviews important?
You do everything you can to avoid negative reviews—you should—but the reality is, they’re often inevitable. When they come, see them as opportunities: free, honest feedback that helps you spot issues, strengthen your operations, and provide a positive experience.
Negative reviews identify areas of concern, and addressing them can improve future customer experiences. They’re also a chance to demonstrate accountability and show how much you care about your customers, which can protect your business’s reputation online and increase trust in your brand.
How to handle negative reviews
- Respond to negative feedback promptly
- Perfect your negative review response
- Incorporate customer feedback
- Follow up on negative reviews
Negative reviews can damage your brand image. They can also motivate you to improve customer relationships, your product or services, and your company’s reputation. Here are four tips for using bad reviews to your advantage:
1. Respond to negative feedback promptly
Use brand monitoring tools, such as Ahrefs and Google Alerts, to flag negative reviews and address them immediately. Responding to negative reviews right away can mollify an unhappy customer and discourage them from writing multiple bad reviews on various platforms. It also reduces the chance that other customers will encounter the negative review without the benefit of context from your brand.
2. Perfect your negative review response
Professional, empathetic responses can repair relationships and protect your online reputation. Meanwhile, defensive responses can escalate the situation and amplify any damage to your brand. Remember, you’re addressing a dual audience: the reviewer and other potential customers who are paying attention.
Here’s how to write an effective online review response:
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Apologize. Start with a sincere apology. Acknowledge that your customer had a bad experience rather than what went wrong or who’s at fault. This strategy aligns you with the customer, placing you both on the same side of the problem.
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Restate your value. Briefly restate your brand promise, emphasizing the customer experience you strive to deliver. This reinforces positive messaging about your brand and can underscore the regrets you just expressed.
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Offer support. Outline a resolution, and let the customer know that you’ll follow up with next steps. Be transparent about what you can do, but keep things vague in the public sphere. The details of return shipping and refund methods don’t matter to other potential customers. Keep the emphasis of your public-facing response on your desire to resolve the customer’s issue.
3. Incorporate customer feedback
Successful businesses use positive and negative feedback to improve the customer experience. Negative feedback is particularly useful: Addressing customer concerns helps you avoid similar situations in the future and earn more good reviews over time.
If you receive many reviews, use AI-powered sentiment analysis and natural language processing (NLP) customer feedback tools to continuously scrape reviews, extract data, and highlight trends. If you find that negative reviews consistently mention customer service, for example, focus your efforts on improving customer service processes and ensure that marketing materials educate customers.
Jake also recommends setting aside time to read customer feedback with your team.
“We’re weekly reading the feedback that we get as a company, both the good stuff and the bad stuff,” he says. “Our product team translates the bad stuff into product improvements, so we’re seeing our NPS scores and customer satisfaction scores improve over time because we’re constantly trying to make our stuff better.”
4. Follow up on negative reviews
Following up with dissatisfied customers after their issue has been resolved to thank them for their candid feedback shows your commitment to improvement.
You can also ask follow-up questions via email that invite them to share more details about their experience. Asking for additional negative feedback might feel counterintuitive, but it can help you understand the factors that contributed to the customer’s bad experience. If you fail to glean actionable insights or create a happy customer, taking the conversation offline can still keep additional negative comments out of online reviews.
Negative reviews FAQ
What is the psychology of bad reviews?
Customers leave negative reviews when a product or service doesn’t meet their expectations. Unclear or inaccurate product descriptions, poor customer communication, fulfillment issues, and poor product or service quality can all lead to negative online reviews.
Why do customers leave negative reviews?
The number one reason that customers report leaving negative reviews is disappointment with product or service quality. Other factors include negative overall experiences with a company and discrepancies between marketing materials and value delivered.
What are the causes of negative customer feedback?
The biggest driver of negative feedback is disappointment in the quality of a service or product. Other contributing factors include negative overall experiences with a company and a perception of inaccurate product or service descriptions.
