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Can I Delete a Bad Facebook Review?

Question:

“I just had an irrational person leave a bad Facebook review for something we couldn’t control. Can we remove it?”

Answer:

Technically yes, there are a few things you could do to remove the review. You could remove reviews altogether from your page. You could ban the user from your page. Or, if it was offensive with crude language you could report them to Facebook. But, you don’t want to remove a bad review just because it’s bad.

Let’s dig into the situation a bit more:

You’ve built a wonderful business. You pride yourself on providing an exceptional experience to your customers. Your staff is trained on the right way to treat customers and resolve any issues.

Even the best get yelled at.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where people love to complain, even if your team bends over backwards to help them. The worst part is that these disgruntled trolls will go out of the way to tell the world how horrible your company is…how your service is terrible…you don’t care about people…you’re unresponsive…and how you are not even nice to your own children. You know they type!

For most people, the first instinct is to get defensive–there’s no way someone is going to say untrue things about your company and you’re people! You may even want to address the situation head-on and explain why this person is unfair, untrue and lying. But going into attack mode like this will only make you look petty.

What should you do with a bad Facebook review?

Don’t immediately attack the person in the hopes of defending your honor. Don’t delete it or hide it. Instead, address it in a proactive and helpful way.

Step 1: Address complaints directly on Facebook, then look to move the conversation offline:

Here’s an example:

[This is you]: Hi [Customer Name], thank you for the feedback, I’m very sorry to hear that you didn’t have a great experience. We pride ourselves on doing everything we can to meet our customer’s expecations. Whenever we hear that someone didn’t have an exceptional experience, we want to know about it so that we can fix things. If you could call our offices at XXX-XXX-XXXX, and our management team would be happy to speak with you and help in any way we can. Again, thank you for sharing your feedback, and we look forward to turning things around for you.

Even if the person’s complaint was entirely unfounded, this shows everyone else that you truly do care and you are always looking for ways to improve. Approaching it this way can show potential prospects that you’re honest and will go out of your way to help. It turns negative, into a positive.

Step 2: Don’t engage in a he-said, she-said argument online–you won’t win.

If the person that left the bad review gets combative and won’t listen to reason, don’t try to go back and forth to convince them! These people are so upset (or irrational) that nothing you say or do will help. Engaging in the back and forth will only lead to a petty argument and you won’t win. Just like Elsa in Frozen, you need to “Let it go!” If you find the person continues to pester you and leave rude comments, you want to consider banning them from your page. Here are Facebook directions on how to ban someone from your page.

Step 3: Put a proactive plan in place to build more positive reviews.

No matter how amazing your customer service is at some point you’re going to deal with a bad review. The best way to combat bad reviews is to overwhelm them with the positives. Think about your own take on reviews. If you were looking for a hotel and there were 203 four and five-star reviews and just two people that left bad reviews, you probably wouldn’t blink an eye at those bad reviews. On the other hand, if those two bad reviews were alongside only a few positive reviews, you would have a much different impression.

So, instead of focusing on the negative, drown them out with positives. Put a plan in place to encourage your happy customers and clients to share their great experiences on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and other review sites. The more four and five-star reviews you get, the better.

We recently had a client in the Kansas City area who had a 1.5-star rating on Yelp—and a few nasty comments from their own trolls. With a proactive strategy to build positive reviews (and a really cost-effective reputation management tool to build more positive reviews), we increased their average review to 3.5 stars in just 3 days! And we collected 36 positive candidate testimonials in just three weeks. Fast forward a year later and they have 426 testimonials with a 4.8/5 average rating!

With a proactive plan to build positive reviews, your best clients will share the truth about your great service and drown out the trolls that just want to complain.

Start getting more positive reviews today!

At BARQAR, we have an amazing reputation management service that helps get more positive reviews and limit negative reviews. It’s a very cost-effective tool to survey your customers and build some amazing success stories and control your online brand. Contact us today to learn more.

 

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