Imagine the following scenario: You enlist the services of a professional content marketing company to spruce up your company Facebook page. You get an appealing logo and cover photo and populate the page with some meaningful, attention-grabbing content. Everything looks great—except for one thing: There, in the right-hand column of your page, you have a couple of reviews from your clients and customers—and one of them is a scathing, one-star pan.
Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence, and there is nothing you can do to absolutely guarantee that it won’t happen. Your consumers are free to speak their mind, no matter how unfair you may feel their judgments to be. Trying to censor your clientele is hardly a winning tactic, but there are some things business owners should know about Facebook reviews—and how they can be responded to positively and constructively.
The Honest Truth About Facebook Reviews
First and foremost—and perhaps to state the obvious: Online reviews matter. Some 70 percent of consumers say they consult online reviews before making a purchasing decision, and Facebook is an increasingly popular destination for finding those reviews. As such, if your business page is beset with some bad reviews, it could be truly devastating for your company; certainly, it’s going to make online consumers think twice before doing business with you.
Some Tips on Responding to Facebook Reviews
With that said, what—if anything—should you do to respond to Facebook reviews for your business? For that matter, what can you do to respond to Facebook reviews?
- To begin with, it’s best that you don’t waste time trying to get Facebook to take down unfair reviews; customers have a right to their opinions, Facebook will tell you, and unless the review is flat-out obscene and abusive, flagging it for removal is unlikely to yield results.
- Make sure that you take the time to respond to customers who leave you positive feedback. This doesn’t have to be anything big and showy; just thank them for their business and for taking the time to rate your service. This will boost client loyalty and engender plenty of consumer goodwill.
- Statistics show that the vast majority of consumers are happy to take down their bad reviews if the problem in question is addressed—so it is very much worth your time to reach out to those who have left negative comments and see how you can make things better. This also shows to other customers that you care about offering superior service.
- For reviews that are simply unreasonable and nasty, you may or may not wish to respond—but remember that doing so will only give them more juice in the Facebook algorithms. If you don’t believe that any good will come of it, then, it may be best just to let them be, or at the most to offer a very simple word of apology.
- Ultimately, the best way to deal with bad reviews is to work at generating more positive ones; you might even leave requests on your invoices and receipts for customers to leave their feedback on Facebook.
Responding to Facebook reviews is a delicate matter—worthy of some real thoughtfulness and strategy.