Take a Moment to Review Your Business Past

If there is one thing that is true in business, is that customer's memories are long.

They don't frequently forget bad customer service, business missteps, or negative reviews. However, bad reviews don't have to be a death-knell to your business.

If your past is killing your business, here is how to deal with the reviews, and possibly turn them into positives.

Offer Counter Reviews

Encourage your happy customers to post positive reviews online to counterbalance the negative ones. Typically, customers are more apt to post negative reviews than to post a review when they get great service. So if your company can get more positive reviews, the negative ones look more balanced. In fact, many people say that companies with only glowing reports and reviews often look "too good to be true" and smell of scams.

Offer an Olive Branch

If you can get in touch with the reviewer privately, definitely not on the review site or posted publically, then you can apologize for whatever spurred their review and offer a resolution. While this may not help, it could end up with a retracted review. Either way, your customer service will work to your advantage and the customer originally upset will be mildly less so.

Get Fake Reviews Removed

Many times if the review is fake you can get it removed from the website it was posted on. While a Gartner report states that nearly 15 percent of reviews online are fake, you want to make sure that the ones that are showing up for your site are indeed real -bad or good. This can be a long process, but it is well worth the time and effort to get reviews that aren't even legitimate off the web.

Learn When to Respond

Respond to pleasant reviews, try not to respond to negative reviews. Responding to negative reviews can be seen as arrogant, provocative, or you can be seen as validating the review. None of these are good for your business, so best say a humble "Thank you" to the good reviews, and breathe deep on the negative ones and walk away. Keep track of where your reviews are showing up, and periodically look in to see what new has been said. You may find that another customer has come to your rescue without you having to comment at all.

While all businesses will deal with negative online reviews or word-of-mouth at some point, the way you handle it will say a lot about your company and how your business will rebound from the review.

You can turn negative reviews into a positive experience, allowing you to garner a more favorable review from the very people who help keep you in business in the first place.