Ever Had a Negative Review?

Have you ever had a negative review on one of those review sites? Luckily for me, my Yelp reviews are all positive. But, that isn’t the only place where people give us Pilates teachers and studio owners reviews. With the age of social media upon us every single post you put out there is open for interpretation and many people find it there life’s journey to tear us down. To say something not nice. People can now critique you publicly in so many ways. So, it’s important to know how to handle it! Not just because it hurts personally but also because some of those critiques can affect our business.

3 Tips to Handle Bad Reviews

Here are 3 ways to handle the bullies, critics, and feedback:

1. Decide if you need to respond: If it’s on a Yelp or site that reviews services, a response is probably necessary. But, you will most likely not win them back. However, others coming to the site will see how positively you handle the situation. It is also a good idea before you respond to see if they truly were a client. If the negative comment is on social media it may not be necessary to respond. And, remember you can always block or delete. There are people who like to spend their time tearing others down. Spend your time engaging with those who want to create a community with you. Lastly, we are not perfect humans (I know, it’s true) and sometimes negative reviews are opportunities for us to review ourselves and our services and see if there is room to improve.
2. Decide how you want to respond: If after doing your research you decide to respond to the comment you can take the conversation offline and direct message them to try and resolve it. Then go back to the public space and do an “update” on the situation.
3. Respond immediately: I know! You have a million things to do but it’s important if you are on the review sites or you have forums where people can post comments about you that you stay on top of reviews or responses. If you cannot have someone else monitor them. Referrals are key to our businesses and online referrals are often how we get many new clients. So, while you cannot control everyone it’s important that you save time in your admin hours to show just how awesome you are and respond to reviews.

We will never be without those people who want to say something not so nice. There will always be someone who needs to remind us that they are there or that they may know more than we do. And, there will be those clients who come in and complain about things that are out of our control like parking, traffic, etc. But, what we can control we should and if you are reading this it means you care about how you run your business. So, it’s super important that you don’t take these negative reviews personally. But, that you do use them as an evaluation and to see if you are still doing business in line with your goals. If you are, then the review is nothing more than an annoyance. If someone complains that you don’t have classes and your goals are to only teach privates then it’s not a negative review. It simply informs people of what you are, a private session studio.

Do you have a negative review story you want to share? What happened and how did you handle it?

xx~LL