Business Practices | | Published October 15, 2015

Why Bad Customer Service Reviews are Actually Beneficial

No matter how large or small your company is, you need to make a point to sort through customer feedback. Feedback in the form of reviews is probably one of the best ways to learn about what your company is doing right and what it isn't. The consensus among many business owners is that only small businesses really pay attention to customer reviews, but that isn't true. According to a BuyerView report by Software Advice, businesses with more than 500 employees were more likely than small businesses to pay close attention to customer feedback. Still, numbers for both large and small companies were high with 87 percent of large and 70 percent of smaller businesses utilizing and interpreting reviews to improve operations.

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Online reviews can be an important tool for all businesses.

In addition to being able to identify and correct what has gone wrong, bad customer service reviews provide a unique insight into the perception of your company. Here are some of the ways even negative reviews can be helpful:

You find out what to improve
While you will no doubt discover what you're doing right, you will also learn what you can do better. Most of the time bad reviews are going to have nuggets of information about how to remedy the situation. In bad reviews, people don't just say what they didn't enjoy, they also say why. This is an opportunity to improve your business.

"B2B customer support software can help you chronicle all of the information from a review in the right way."

Use the information you find in bad reviews to change your software or your process to ensure that your customers are happy. B2B customer support software can help you chronicle all of the information from a review in the right way. With so many reviews, it can be hard to sort this information, but with a good customer service software solution you can collect this information in your customer database under a clients name, making it easy to address specific customer issues.

You find out if your employees are doing a superb job
Often, a bad review comes down to personal interaction. If a reviewer complains of rude, unknowledgeable or otherwise unsatisfactory employee interactions, you may need to have a talk with your employees. Even one bad review of your employees should put up some red flags. If you see several, it's time to have a meeting with your staff and discuss the reviews. Sometimes just seeing the bad reviews is enough to get employees to improve their performance. However, if that doesn't happen, consider doing regular checks and employee audits to ensure that your employees are doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

Additionally, if you notice a bad review based on poor employee performance, make sure to reach out to the buyer who posted the review to issue an apology. Once you discuss details with the customer, update your customer support software database as needed.

You can learn to strengthen a relationship through a bad review

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Proper handling of a bad review can help strengthen relationships in the long run.

When you spend a lot of time looking over and comprehending reviews of your products and services, you're bound to find a few bad reviews even if you're doing a great job. That isn't a bad thing. According to Software Advice, 50 percent of buyers will forgive the actions that caused them to post the bad review if the situation is resolved properly. This means you can have a lasting positive impact on a large portion of disgruntled buyers, making even bad reviews positive.

When you pay attention to reviews and deal with them in the correct way, you may also improve the number of positive reviews you receive, as customers today are sadly used to mediocre customer service experiences - turning a negative into a positive can actually have an even stronger impact than jus a standard positive review. And according to Software Advice, nearly 60 percent of buyers said positive reviews factored into their purchase decision. This means responding to reviews and adjusting your business as needed will not only help you keep the customers you currently have, but it will bring you new ones as well.

Want to see what real users are saying about TeamSupport? Take a look at our reviews on Capterra

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