It s normal for businesses, even established and successful ones, to receive negative customer feedback. Some companies welcome negative comments, while others prevent their customers from voicing them out. It s true that bad reviews can affect how people will view your brand, especially when these are made available on public platforms like social networks and review sites. But, negative feedback shouldn’t always frighten you.

Why you should not avoid bad reviews

These practices can never quell dissatisfaction. Preventing your customers from publicly posting negative reviews sends a strong message that your business has something to conceal. It tells them that their opinions are not valued. Although non-disparagement agreements can prevent customers from publishing bad feedback, they can t stop them from sharing their bad experiences through word-of-mouth to their circles.

In other words, any conscious effort you make in shunning negative feedback can still backfire and affect your credibility and genuineness. Some companies would go to surprising lengths just to block off negative feedback. Non-disparagement clauses are integrated by some companies in contracts that customers have to agree with before doing business with them. This prohibits them from publicly posting negative comments about their brands. Some are even willing to offer promising incentives or discounts to customers in exchange for positive feedback.

How to deal with negative feedback

Although the concept of negative feedback is generally an unpleasant one, especially for businesses, it s still important for you to face this fear and solve the underlying issues. First, you have to stop from actively stopping your customers from expressing negative opinions about your services.

The only acceptable move is to filter fake reviews that are generated by users pretending to be your customers and other malicious user-generated content that can offend visitors of your website. This is why companies choose to outsource content moderation services to a call center in the Philippines with back office solutions to make sure their sites are free from misleading information.

The best way to handle negative feedback is to openly acknowledge them and treat them as opportunities to prove to the public that you can still provide excellent customer service. This recovery will not only impress the customers making the complaint, but also those who visit your website or your brand’s social media accounts.

Negative feedback shouldn’t always be responded to, but when the need arises, the best way to settle disputes is doing it privately with the customer. To protect your brand image, however, you may opt to publicly acknowledge the negative comment made by your customers on any public platform. Just let them know that you are acting on the issue and that you will reach out to them directly to determine what went wrong.

Openly acknowledging accountability for any mistake can let your brand earn respect from customers. Having only positive comments and no negative ones at all will give the impression that you are manipulating your review section to look good. Mistakes are reminders that your brand is human. By making an apology, you are therefore sending a personal message that you care about your customers.