This get’s me so excited every time I think about it. Why? Because maybe, just maybe the good guys have a chance now. It’s going to be impossible, even for the largest companies to cover up crooked business practices when information is so readily available and easily distributed to the masses via the internet. There are no more information bottlenecks. If your company is getting negative reviews on the internet, maybe it’s because your company deserves it. On the flipside, when a customer has an experience with a business that exceeds his or her expectations, the opposite happens. They will happily tell everyone they know about their experience. Guess what? These companies deserve it too! In the web 2.0 world, you get what you deserve.

“What if those reviews are unwarranted!? I had a bad employee that did that, it’s not my fault!” You can make all the excuses you want, but at the end of the day it is still your company. Luckily for most cases, it’s not that difficult to remedy these situations. When people post negative reviews about things, they generally assume the company they are complaining about is not listening.

Step one, read the criticism, and ask yourself what you can change to prevent this in the future.

Step two, contact that person who wrote the review. Simply contacting the person who wrote the review says a lot. It shows that you care about your company and your customers.

Step three, give that person something unexpected. A free gift, a free exchange for the product they bought, a gift certificate, something that will make them want to tell others about their new experience with your company. A positive experience can more often than not erase memories of a negative one (to a certain degree, there are some experiences that create permanent views of a company).

Do all you can within reason to change that person’s perception of your company. Chances are if you did your job of creating a new positive experience, they’ll go ahead and and edit their review, or post an update, glowing about the exceptional customer service provided by your company. Now take into account there will be times that no matter what you do, you won’t be able to change that persons mind. I personally have had some experiences that I will never do business with certain companies again. Sometimes you’ll encounter a customer with an experience like that, it’s inevitable, but if you begin to see a lot of those customers, maybe you need to take a long hard look at your business.

“But that’s too much work! That’s too expensive! If word gets out that I do that, people will take advantage of it and it’ll cost me a lot of money!”  There is nothing more valuable than a satisfied customer. At the same time, there is nothing more detrimental than a dissatisfied customer. How much does a dissatisfied customer cost? How much in lost potential revenue will you never see because of a negative review? Is it more than a $100 gift certificate? More than an upgraded replacement product? What is the cost of that lost revenue of one dissatisfied customer? It’s not just a nice idea to keep tabs on what others are saying about your business, it’s imperative. If you don’t believe that contacting dissatisfied customers is worth the time and energy, I wish you all the luck in your business, chances are it won’t be around for too much longer. Who’s ultimately going to win is the consumer and the businesses who do good by their customer. Did I say how excited this makes me????