A negative review means you might have missed out on a great business opportunity, hence it is very important to respond to reviews – positive or negative. Timely response to online reviews is the right approach to learn from your mistakes and build business goodwill. You should be more careful while dealing with vocal or touchy customers. Review sites let business owners respond in private or in public to user reviews.

1. Act in time

• Negative feedback can be spread rather fast. It is viral in nature, and can have serious implications for smaller businesses. It is important to appropriately deal with it and to diffuse it as quickly as possible. An important aspect is to be proactive. You cannot sit back and let people criticize you because your competitors can take advantage of the situation.
• If you do not act in time it can cause some damage to your reputation. The key is to learn from such experiences, even if they are not always pleasant, especially in the beginning so that you do not repeat the earlier mistakes.

2. Track review and search sites

• Online reputation management tools make a smart investment choice for budding businesses. Those operating in the service industry must resort to tracking tools to find out websites and webpages containing criticism. They keep track of local review sites and local search sites.
• Depending on how you use social media, it can benefit your or even harm your cause. It can promote brand loyalty or create suspicion about in the minds of your customers.

3. Address customer queries

• There may be customers who will face technical difficulties. It’s possible that they are a bit confused about certain features of a product, or they are not sure how to practically use them. Address these queries, even if they may seem silly or too common.
• You may think that they are out of context, but a customer may still have an issue with them. If you do not respond in time, the person may voice his or her dissatisfaction on Facebook or Twitter. This may soon create a negative buzz.
• To avoid this, a senior person from your customer service department should ideally tweet back with a piece of advice. Often the customers will watch out for the responsive approach, which is bound to pacify them. They will check if you’ve acted upon their complaints or concerns, before reposing trust in you.

How you handle their feedback, particularly negative in nature, is important. There are certain ways to deal with the discomforting situation. Also, remember, it’s not the communication in itself but how you act on basis of it is what matters. Being able to judge what is working in your favor and what makes customers satisfied is important, too. For this, try to constantly improve on the products and services you offer based on the user feedback.