If you want to succeed in business, it’s important to keep your customers happy! Without a solid customer base, there won’t be sales. And without sales, your business won’t meet its revenue goals. Getting more business reviews is an excellent strategy for business success.
Nonetheless, reviews quality matters more than quantity. Quality reviews go a long way to help boost your marketing efforts because one of the reasons people buy is because of social proof. Today, we’ll cover the common causes for negative reviews and how the feedback process can hinder 5-star reviews. So, let’s get to it!
Causes for Negative Business Online Reviews
If you’re wondering why you’re getting 1 star, 2 stars, 3 stars, or 4 stars instead of 5 stars reviews, here’s the explanation.
1. Poor Service Delivery
When customers pay for services, they expect nothing but the notch services. Depending on how you treat them, you can get a 5 star or below 5-star review. It’s, therefore, important to check how you talk to customers when they make inquiries.
In addition, if your business is purely service-based, you want to make sure you exceed your customers’ expectations. If you make a promise, make sure you deliver. Possibly, you should go above and beyond to over-deliver because this is the only way to get your customers excited.
It’s senseless to make promises that you can’t keep. If you want bad reviews, this would be the path to take. So, if you already have negative business reviews, poor service delivery could be one of the causes.
2. Unsatisfactory Product
Customers buy products for the solutions they offer. If a product isn’t delivering according to what you promised, it’s pretty obvious your customers will be pissed off. But it won’t stop at that! You’ll also get a bad review for disappointing the customer and causing inconvenience.
For example, customers can buy electronic equipment like a TV set for entertainment or a mobile phone to connect with family and friends. However, if the electronic equipment isn’t delivering the promise, the customer will most likely get agitated for wasting their time.
3. Unfriendly Policies
Truth be told! Customers rarely read policy requirements on your website or social platforms. For those that give it a thought, some never scroll to the bottom to read the last clause. It’s like most customers accept policy requirements without checking what’s inside.
Unfortunately, this has cost so many customers. For example, if you deal in electronic equipment, one of your policy requirements could be one or two free repairs in case there’s a fault. In addition, you could also add conditions to qualify for a free service repair.
Since many customers don’t go through the policies, this may lead to a stalemate between you and them. The best way to prevent this situation is to ensure you don’t have unfriendly policies that can hurt your customers.
In addition, you also want to simplify the policies to only a few pages one can read in a minute or two. Lastly, if possible, you can summarize the policies so that your customers know what they’re getting into. Doing these will save your business from tons of negative reviews.
4. Negative Brand Perception
Negative brand perception comes about as a result of the relationship you have with the public. First, you should ask yourself: is your business known to solve problems in society, or it’s part of them?
People love value and will be advocates for it any time. If you give them a reason to see and experience the opposite, it may never go well with your business. So, by all means, you want to ensure your core values match those of your target market.
Negative brand perception can fuel negative energy. If the situation goes out of hand, this is how you end up with negative reviews on your business website or google my business. Studies show that 97% of consumers look online for local businesses. This is the reason why you want to make sure you’re in good standing with the local audience by maintaining good relations.
5. Malicious Attack from former Staff Members and Competitors
It’s also possible to get negative business reviews and low star ratings from people who aren’t your typical customers. If you’re wondering how that’s possible, that’s where malicious former staff members and competitors come in.
If you had a bad ending with a former staff member, they could use a pseudo account to hurt your business by leaving fake google business reviews. In addition, your competitors can get jealous and leave low star ratings on your website or google my business.
You don’t have to stress over these fake reviews because you can flag them as inappropriate. That’s how you remove bad reviews from Google my business.
How the Feedback Process Can Hinder 5-Star Reviews
There are many ways the feedback process can hinder 5-star reviews. According to Harvard Business Review, one of them is sophisticated review software. Often, businesses use hard-to-use review software and plugins that customers find hard to use. Therefore, out of frustration, they may leave a review for the sake of it.
Also, getting positive feedback and 5-star ratings can be a hurdle because of poor timing. For example, requesting 5-star reviews during work hours or when someone is having a bad day will likely not get you the review.
Lastly, being pushy never goes well for 5-star reviews. If your customer feels you’re pushing them too hard, they’ll most likely turn dodgy. But if they decide to leave a review after it all, the negative experience can trigger a low star rating.
Wrapping Up
The secret to business success is getting your customers excited by exceeding their expectations. If they’re satisfied, you can leverage their 5-tar reviews as social proof to get more customers. If you’d like to know how to get more online reviews for your business, we can help. You can View our digital marketing services here.
