It's frustrating to get a negative review! You work hard to make your business the best and there are times when not every customer gets the best experience. If someone shares their negative experience in a review, there are some strategic ways to reply. Our online reputation management service is here to help shed some light on best practices for responding to a negative review. Take a look:
Getting a negative review may be disheartening and you may write off the situation, but it's important to reply to the negative review in a calm and professional manner. Potential and current customers may be eagerly awaiting your reply to such a review to see if you're a dealership they want to do business with.
Offer your understanding of the situation and try to make the upset customer feel like you understand their frustration. This simple statement can help the customer feel more validated in their feelings and may help bring down the defense barrier they may have up toward your dealership.
Include an apology for the experience your customer had in your response. Reassure the customer that this is not the typical experience for your dealership. This can also encourage a potential car buyer to see that this isn't the normal experience customers have with your auto dealership and help reduce the hinderance of lost business.
Depending on the negative experience, find a way to make things right with the customer. Offer free service for a vehicle (if they made a purchase) or invite them to give your dealership another try and ensure their next experience is above and beyond. This can help your upset customer see that you really are trying to make things right.
Often times the conversation will simmer down and you'll need to exchange personal information to complete the process of making it right. Invite the customer to contact your dealership or let them know you'll be reaching out to further discuss the issue. If the conversation continues to get heated, invite the customer to contact your owner or manager to discuss the problem. The quicker a heated conversation gets taken offline, the better. You don't want to be the next viral thread going around due to a negative review catching fire.
If your customer seems satisfied with what you've done to make the situation right, take that opportunity to ask them to change their negative review. A customer is the only person who can change a review online. Many times someone who left a negative review and then received a positive follow up experience is more than willing to delete a negative review or even better, change the negative review to a positive one.
Negative reviews can be detrimental to your dealership's online reputation. Our platform offers automated review prompts to be sent to your customers and there's even an option to have negative feedback sent directly to your email (instead of being posted publically). This can help cut back on the negative reviews that are left online and gives your team the chance to make things right as soon as a negative experience happens!
Monitoring your auto dealership online reputation has never been easier than with BlueJay Reviews. Our online reputation management service creates a space that captures your online reviews so you can easily respond to positive and negative reviews with ease. While we hope your dealership doesn't receive a negative review, you'll know exactly how to reply if it does happen!
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