Businesses that serve the public, such as restaurants and retailers, strive for 100 percent customer satisfaction. Yet the unfortunate truth is that they can’t please everyone all the time. For whatever reason, negative reviews from customers are a fact of life for many businesses.
Thanks to the rise of online customer review sites, negative customer reviews have the potential to do some serious damage to a business’s reputation, whether or not those negative reviews are warranted. Nearly 60 percent of people say that negative reviews posted online affect their opinion of a local business.
If you’re a small business owner concerned about your online reputation, you may feel as though the deck is stacked against you. Not only do sites such as Yelp allow your customers to post negative feedback about your business and sway thousands of potential customers, but those sites also make it clear that you have very little influence over what they post.
However, just because Yelp won’t allow you to manage your reputation on the site directly doesn’t mean you’re helpless. Under certain circumstances, Yelp will take your side and remove reviews that paint an unfair or unflattering picture of your business. All you need is to have a deeper understanding of Yelp’s terms of service and how to use them to your advantage.
For example, reviews that promote or mention your competitors can be flagged for removal, as well as reviews that include offensive content. Although these and other conditions may not apply to everything said about your business on Yelp, they may be able to help you keep negative reviews to a minimum.
Refer to the following guide for some tips on how you can have negative reviews of your business flagged for removal from Yelp. These can provide you with a small measure of control over your online reputation, and give you more chances to deliver 100 percent satisfaction to your customers.
Author bio: Lee McNiel, Founder and CEO of ReviewPush, graduated from Texas State University and has extensive experience in online review management. McNiel assists local businesses, franchises and multi-location businesses with monitoring and managing their online reviews.
Leave a Reply