How To Handle Negative Customer Product Reviews On Shopify

You've got a Shopify store and you installed an app (Opinew, hopefully) so that customers can leave reviews of your service or products.

Sooner or later, you'll get negative reviews, that's a fact. In this post, we'll look at a few ways of thinking about it that will help you deal with this situation swiftly and professionally.

Before we jump right into this topic, we want to let you know that we are really passionate about customer review objections. That's why we wrote an in-depth article about how to respond to positive and negative reviews.

Make sure to have a look at it after this article to get more ideas!

Great! Now let's get back to the process of handling negative reviews:

Assess The Situation

Before you go putting out fires, take a minute to think about things, and take a step back.

What seems to be the problem? Is it something you can quickly fix? Does the customer seem mad? Maybe even offended? Or does the customer seem more disappointed? Figuring this out can help you determine the tone  (maybe a touch more apologetic or as providing support?) and visualize a solution that you think may work for this customer.

It can also help you spot if something is off about it possibly identifying a review written in bad faith, perhaps by a competitor or an internet troll.

Draft And Work On Your Reply

Yes,  you should reply quickly, but there's always time to think about what you're going to say and how you're going to say it. It's essential to find the right tone. So think about what you want to say to this customer and then read it out loud to yourself or maybe even ask a friend to listen to it.

Typically a good response covers the following:‌
‌ · Saying "hi" and that you're sorry their experience with your product or service hasn't been as expected‌.
 · ‌Reassuring the customer that things will be made right (make sure to mention specifically the issue they're writing about, that's how they will know you actually paid attention to what they said, and that's very important)‌.
‌ · Letting the customer (and everyone else watching) know that they'll be contacted privately to continue the conversation and offer solutions.

These are the basics, your reply can cover more but not less. But please, take our word for it, don't go into details, it will probably sound defensive.

Your response should be empathetic, concerned, and supportive.

Remember, everyone else is watching. That means your reply has to be good even when replying to a review written in bad faith. If you honestly think that's the case, you can request for that review to be taken down on the grounds that it's a fake review (written by the competition, a former employee or something like that) but it is a good practice to reply either way.

Doing Right By The Customer

Once you've drafted your reply it's time for action. If you want to know more about how to do right by the customer, check out our post on that here.

Ask The Customer To Update Their Review

Oh and don't forget to ask the customer to update their review once you've addressed their issue. Most likely, they'll do it, but even if they don't it's worth the shot.

Keep Sending out Review Requests

One bad review (with an appropriate response) isn't the end of the world. But you have to make sure more reviews keep coming your way. Seeing one negative review in a sea of positive ones tells a different story than a negative review and a few positive ones.

Quantity matters. Quality matters too. So try to get many positive reviews by providing a good product or service and sending review requests automatically to all your customers. If you want to learn more about that, you can check our post on that here.

Keep in mind that reviews (and social proof in general) is very important on Shopify. Some stores are... not great and having good customer reviews is a great way to set yourself apart from them.

That's about it. But just to be sure, let's recap:‌
‌ · Asses the situation - figure out what the problem is and if you can fix it and how the customer feels about it.‌
‌ · Draft and work on your reply - don't be defensive, instead be empathetic, concerned, and supportive.‌
‌ · Work with your customer to make things right.‌
 ‌· Ask them to update their review.‌
‌ · Keep sending out review requests to get more reviews!

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