It may sound ridiculous, but bad reviews are not always a bad thing…
You must be thinking, “Charlie’s finally lost it… of course bad reviews are bad for business!”
Well, you might be only half right 😉
Bad reviews help your business in two important ways.
The first one is simple: bad reviews give you an outside perspective. If no one ever complained about your products or services, you’d never know what to improve!
A negative review can be just the push you need to overhaul your return policy or put your focus back on training employees… whatever the bad review highlights, you know you’ve got something to work on.
After all, nobody’s perfect, and if all you ever see are glowing reviews and praise, you might lose touch with constantly improving your business…
Now, the second reason is a little more complicated… but believe me, it makes perfect sense.
In some ways, bad reviews actually make your company more desirable and believable!
It sounds crazy at first, but think about it… Internet users are awfully skeptical, and a site full of five-star reviews and nothing but good things to say is immediately suspect…
A few bad reviews among the good actually adds a human element to your business – a bad review of your company is a little piece of honesty… and we all know what honesty leads to: trust.
Shoppers are all too familiar with companies that stack review sites with great ratings, who bury every negative comment and pretend like everything is always smooth sailing…
And they see right through it.
With a mix of good and bad reviews from real customers, people researching your company can get a real sense of what it’s like to do business with you. A single bad review isn’t going to turn them off – in fact, it will probably make them more curious to find others that shared the bad experience, or to look at other reviews that counter the negative ones.
A few bad reviews in the mix are simply more realistic… and that means your company is easier to identify with… and with it, easier to trust.
Beyond the point of being “realistic” to customers and prospects, consider this:
Not everyone shares expectations, so a “bad experience” for one customer could be exactly what another customer is looking for…
A new feature that one customer hates might be exactly what someone else has always wanted. A short customer experience might feel like neglect to one customer, but be exactly the “in and out” transaction someone else is interested in…
It’s all based on opinion and subjective experience – negative feedback is not the end of the world.
As I’ve said before, you can’t expect to please every person at every moment…
Bad reviews are going to happen, so you might as well learn from them… and let your customers and prospects learn from them too.
In your corner,
Charlie
P.S. For more ways to build trust and grow your business, check out the Predictable Profits Insiders’ Club today!
