How to handle bad reviews:
Did you know that just one negative review could deter 20% of prospective customers? More than that, 85% of customers might choose to skip your business based solely on reviews. Responding to negative feedback is crucial. Ignoring or censoring reviews can backfire with 62% of consumers reluctant to give their business to restaurants that do.
What’s the best way to minimize the impact of a bad review? A guest who takes their time to leave a review is likely looking to have a problem resolved or bring a poor experience to the attention of management. You should take responsibility for the problem and find a way to make it right with the guest. After all, you want them to come back, but you also need to realize that other customers are watching how you handle complaints.
On the bright side
Contrary to popular belief, when a guest has a positive experience they are actually more likely to leave a review than when they have a negative one. Studies have shown that 47% of consumers were motivated to write a review after a good experience, compared to 22% after a negative one.
Get more positive reviews:
It may sound obvious but the first step to getting positive reviews is to provide a positive experience. Is your food and service up to the standards of your guests? You want authentic reviews about the excellent experience people have at your restaurant. Buying or manufacturing fake reviews is not only easily sniffed out by guests, but it could result in your Google account being penalized or shut down.
So you’ve made sure your guests are happy, how do you get them to share their experiences as a review that will benefit you? Here’s a few classic ideas:
- Customize your receipts or signage to encourage guests to leave a review on your desired platform
- Do give-aways or other rewards for guests who leave reviews
- Train your servers to ask guests who have had a great experience to leave a positive review.
Embracing some more innovative solutions:
There are some more modern and effective ways to garner reviews these days. A few methods that are gaining popularity include:
- WiFi marketing, whereupon connecting to a restaurant’s free WiFi receives personalized messages prompting reviews.
- Reservation and online-ordering platforms can ask guests to review their experience directly through push notifications or email.
- **Most effective method** Table payment methods such as FasTab that ask your guests for a review every time they pay, pushing 5 star reviews to google. Restaurants are receiving 6X more Google reviews with FasTab!
The best of both worlds
A feature that may help you address negative reviews in private while showing off the best experiences to the world can be found in FasTab.
While we offer first and foremost a quick and easy to use table payment service, our partners have seen great success with our internal review feature.
How does it work? After paying, we ask every guest to rate their experience out of 5 stars. Not only are these reviews kept private and only accessible by your managers, but we find over 55% of users leave a review!
So how does this help you get more Google reviews to drive your sales? When guests rate their experience on FasTab we keep 1 to 4 star reviews internal, but ask every 5 star reviewer if they want to push their review directly to your restaurant’s Google profile. We have a partner who has generated over 40% of their 5-star reviews using FasTab since we launched this feature.
Conclusion
Reviews whether positive or negative are integral to a business’ reputation and revenue. A proactive, authentic, and innovative approach to building positive reviews and managing negative feedback can seriously boost your image and your bank account.
