It’s sad, but Fake Reviews do happen. They could show up on Google, Yelp, or possibly on any of the dozens of other websites that accept reviews.
But what can you do if you get one?
First … stay calm. DON’T react and reply with “Hey you idiot — you’re messing up my reputation.”
Take your time to craft an appropriate response. I would suggest something like …
“Hi, ***insert reviewer’s name***,
We take these reviews very seriously and we want to understand what went wrong that triggered this poor review. But, unfortunately, we checked our customer records and we can’t find anything about your identity from your name in our records. If you are a client of ours, we would truly like to investigate this issue further. Please contact ***person’s name*** immediately at (email or phone) to help locate your info and resolve this issue.”
Remember, if you can’t respond in a calm and professional manner, don’t respond at all. Yes it’s very upsetting to receive a fake review. But HOW you respond is a reflection of you and your company, to everyone else who is checking you out.
This is also a great opportunity for others to see how well you handle customer issues. Just because it’s in a public forum, doesn’t mean you should ignore it. It’s vital to stay on top of ALL reviews. Good and Bad.
You can also look at this from a different viewpoint. Imagine you saw a terrible one star review on someone else’s google page. AND, you saw that the company responded with a similar message as I provided above. Would you recognize it as a fake review? If yes, then you can focus on the other reviews before you decide about using this company.
