5 Tips on How to Respond to Negative Feedback from Your Customers

Responding to negative feedback isn’t always easy. Sometimes you have to deal with unhappy customers that are not always polite or patient enough to hear you out.

And even though it’s normal to get upset and feel bad when you receive negative feedback, it’s essential not to lose your temper and try to retaliate. Start by reading or listening to the review. Then step away from the keyboard if possible or just give yourself a couple of seconds to process the feedback. This will give you time to come up with a calm and appropriate response to the negative customer feedback.

But what if that’s not enough? Take a look below and use one of these five tips on how to respond to negative feedback like a pro.

Listen and listen carefully

A good way to receive negative feedback is to just listen. Whether the feedback comes over a phone call or you find it in the comments section, it’s important to hear the customer out.

Of course, you should distinguish the accuracy of the feedback judging by its quality. Not many are capable of giving criticism by taking into consideration the other party’s feelings. 

Also, when writing a response, make sure to address the reviewer properly and thank them for taking the time to get in touch. It’s important to make your customer feel heard. So, address them personally and show them that your business appreciates and values honest feedback. 

Bonus tip: Always provide a way for customers to easily leave feedback by taking advantage of our great feedback forms. You can personalize these forms and use them to easily engage your customers.

Try to empathize 

In some cases, you might feel that the customer feedback is unreasonable. Maybe the customer doesn’t know enough about your business or maybe they were just in a bad mood. 

But no matter the circumstances, apologizing to a customer and letting them know that you acknowledge their opinion can go a long way in soothing nerves. 

Remember, you don’t have to agree, but you should try to understand them and the reason behind their frustration. Put yourself in their shoes. It’s not easy to figure out how to deal with bad customer feedback online, but this should be a great starting point.

Take full responsibility

When you spot a negative comment, don’t think of ways to make excuses. It doesn’t matter if what happened was an uncommon instance or just an unfortunate incident. Just acknowledge the customer’s problem.

Provide reassurance that you’ll hold your business to high standards. You could apologize and take responsibility by saying that you regret missing the mark this time. Explain how you’re feeling awful that you have failed to deliver a great experience.

Thank the customer for taking the time to write their thoughts and use the feedback to make things better. That’s one way to show your customer you’re taking responsibility.

Try to solve the problem

There are situations when a customer leaves a bad review just because they feel like it at the moment or without any obvious reason.

On the other hand, it often happens that a business makes a mistake. Maybe your service agents were rude, the shipment took longer, or the product arrived damaged. In some of these cases, customers don’t take their time to talk to your customer service agents. Instead, they sit down and write a negative review, before giving you the chance to address the problem. 

Since this will most certainly happen at one point, you should know that helping the customer is absolutely necessary in this case. It’s already too late to take the problem to your customer service team. At this point, you have to solve the issue. 

Respond to the comment and start working on a solution. Remember, people will be able to see the whole interaction in the comments section. So, act quickly and be determined to fulfil your customer’s needs. This sequence of actions will greatly reduce the impact of the negative feedback you have already received and will put the spotlight on your customer-focused approach.

Redeem yourself

Once you have done everything that was mentioned above, you should try to do something nice for the customer to redeem yourself. This is another good way of giving a reviewer a more positive impression of your business. So, feel free to ask them for a second chance.

Maybe the problem they had was out of the ordinary. Maybe it was just an unlucky accident. 

But either way, you should offer a gift to attract them to come back to your business. This doesn’t mean that you should always hand out freebies. The gift can be a discount code or free shipping.

But if you manage to fix the problem and your customer loves the gift, maybe it’s time to ask them to give an update on their previous situation.

Don’t be too pushy and never ask about it publicly. Fortunately, responsible customers will always change it themselves if they feel like the business made all the steps to resolve an issue and fix the bad experience.

Final thoughts

Dealing with negative feedback can be time-consuming and emotionally draining.  It can help to listen carefully, stay calm, and look for the best solutions for both the customer and your company. Get to the bottom of it, don’t blame anyone, and focus on fixing the process so that it doesn’t happen again.

Although not as common, poorly optimized processes that involve clunky forms can also frustrate customers. Opt for a form builder that helps you build high-converting online forms that both look good and are easy to fill in. You may never know when your own systems (and not your business services) can be the reason behind negative feedback. So, always check your workflows.

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