Your Guide to Automotive Industry Digital Marketing

It’s bound to happen to even the best of companies. An unsatisfied customer writes a scathing review about your automotive industry business on Yelp or your Google+ Local page.

What do you do?

To help you answer this question, here are the most important steps for handling bad online customer reviews.

1.  Set Up Google Alerts – To protect your company, you must monitor online chatter. Google Alerts can provide free instant email updates about what people are saying about your business. For other monitoring tool options, read “How to Track What’s Being Said About You and Your Company Online.”

2. Claim Your Review Sites – To respond to online reviews, you must claim administrative access to your business listings on review sites. Every review site is different. However, you can typically find directions in the Help or Customer Support areas. You’ll want to claim listings on Google+ Local, Yelp, Yahoo! Local Listings, Citysearch and MerchantCiricle.

3. Assess the Review – When you get a bad review, take a close look at it. Is it legitimate? Or are the claims false? In general, most of the reviews you’ll see will be real. Every now and then, you might get a fake review from a disgruntled employee. In these cases, contact the administrators of the review site to remove it.

4.  Respond Quickly – The worst thing you can do is ignore a legitimate bad online review. By responding quickly, you show the customers that you care. It also helps you take control of the situation before it spirals out of control.

5.  Include an Apology – When responding to a bad online review, make sure that you apologize to the customer. Make sure to spell-check the apology before sending. Double-check the spelling of the individual’s name.

6.  Take the Conversation Offline – In the apology, ask for the contact information of the reviewer so you can provide them we a solution to resolve the situation. Taking the conversation offline helps to defuse the situation.

7.  Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep – When resolving the problem, never offer anything that you can’t deliver. Making promises that you can’t keep will only escalate an already bad situation. Think out your resolution.

8. Encourage Positive Reviews – When a customer compliments your business in person, encourage them to post a positive online review. It’s great way to boost the online reputation of your company.

9. Never Write Fake Reviews – If you get a barrage of negative online reviews. Don’t even think about posting a bunch of fake reviews. Customers can see right through them and some websites may even penalize you for them. Instead, look at the problem and try to solve it.

Following these nine tips will help you defuse a bad online review.

You’ll want to regularly monitor online chatter about your business. It’s the only way to protect your reputation. Some automotive industry business, hire outside help to stay on top of the monitoring.

At AfterMarketer Club, we’ve helped lots of companies with automotive online reputation monitoring. Our services help you identify and handle negative online issues before they get out of control. To find out how we can help you, call us today at (602) 412-3426.