Positive reviews can help promote your business and build trust with potential customers, while negative reviews can provide valuable feedback and highlight opportunities to improve your offerings or sales processes.

Here’s your guide to encouraging online reviews about your business – and how to minimise the impact of any negative reviews.

Getting reviews from your customers

You can ask your customers to leave a review as part of your sales process. For example, you might include a QR code or link on a sales receipt, in a follow up email, or on a printed note included with your products, asking for a review.

Here are some guidelines to help you make the most of your customer reviews:

  • You may offer an incentive for customers to leave a review, provided the incentive is available regardless of whether the review is positive or negative. If an incentive is offered, this should be disclosed. For example, if you provide free products for someone to review, it needs to be clear that these were gifted by your business.
  • If you share customer reviews or testimonials, for example on social media or on your business website, make sure you don’t give your customer’s details away. For example, you might use their first name alongside a quote about your products, but not their full name or other identifying details.
  • Don’t be tempted to make up reviews or have your family, friends or staff create misleading reviews about your business. This is actually illegal under Australian Consumer Law.
  • Thank your customers for taking the time to leave a positive review. For example, you could respond to a social media post or online review acknowledging their feedback. This can enhance the customer experience and show potential customers that you value feedback and are committed to providing good service.
  • To help manage reviews, some businesses ask their customers to get in touch with the business directly if there’s a problem with the product or service. This could give you the opportunity to fix any issues or concerns before the customer leaves a negative review.

Tip

If you sell or ship to other countries If your target audience includes customers outside of Australia, make sure you are familiar with the consumer protection, advertising and e-commerce laws that apply in the countries where you sell your products or services. For example, if you sell products or services in the United States, you need to comply with requirements set by the USA Fair Trade Commission (FTC) related to endorsements, testimonials and influencer reviews.

Negative reviews

Negative reviews can be stressful, frustrating and have a significant impact on your business.

While it might be tempting to remove negative reviews, it could be a breach of Australian Consumer Law – except if threatening or offensive language is used. For platforms such as Google and Facebook, you can only ask for reviews to be removed if they breach the platform’s policies and you can provide evidence that the negative review:

  • is false (for example, the person has never been a customer of your business).
  • was motivated by a personal dislike.
  • was left by a competitor (for example, you can provide screenshots that the same person left negative reviews for similar businesses in your area, when it is unlikely they were a customer of all of them).

Providing evidence of these will increase the likelihood that the platform will review and potentially remove the review. Facebook and Google will generally not remove reviews simply because a business disagrees with them or does not want them displayed.

Here are some things you can do to help manage negative reviews and the impact these can have on your business.

How to manage negative reviews

While no business can avoid negative reviews, being prepared can help you respond calmly and professionally. Here are some tips to help you prepare:

  • Accept that negative reviews are normal. If you look up any of your favourite products or services, including bestselling global brands, you’re sure to find some negative reviews about them. Not every product or service is for everyone.
  • Have a process in place. Decide who will respond to negative reviews and how this will be handled. This could be the business owner or a trusted team member.
  • Prepare a response template. Rather than responding when emotions are high, create a template that can be adapted to suit different situations. In most cases, you should:
    • Thank the customer for their feedback.
    • Acknowledge their concerns.
    • Reinforce your commitment to customer service and quality.
    • Offer a solution tailored to the issue.

Just like complaints made in person, negative online reviews don’t have to result in lost business. An appropriate and professional response can help you turn a negative review into an opportunity to show your commitment to customer service and help build trust with potential customers.

Responding to negative reviews

The response you provide will depend on the nature of the complaint. You might offer a direct message (DM) or a phone conversation if they’d like to get in touch, a replacement product, a discount for a future visit or simply an investigation into your processes to prevent similar issues from occurring again.

Respond privately

Many businesses prefer to respond to negative reviews privately and out of public view. Where possible, contact the customer directly, such as through private message, email or a phone call. You can adapt your pre-prepared response to introduce yourself, thank the customer for their feedback, apologise that their experience didn’t meet their expectations and then offer an appropriate solution.

Respond publicly

After contacting the customer privately, you should also respond publicly through the same channel in which the review was received. This demonstrates to potential customers that you acknowledge feedback and are taking steps to manage the issue.

Your public response might be something along the lines of, ‘We’re sorry to hear you were unhappy with our product. It’s our goal to make sure every customer enjoys their experience. We’ve messaged you privately to learn more and can assure you we’ll do everything we can to resolve the issue.'

Handling customer complaints

Dealing with unhappy customers is a normal part of running a business. If you don’t already have a plan to manage customer complaints, here are some tips and resources to help you get prepared.

How to handle customer complaints.

Action to take

Download and complete our online review self assessment checklist to help you identify potential areas for improvement in your business.

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