Can you relate to the sinking feeling most people and businesses feel upon receiving a negative review?
If you can, pay attention to this blog. We’re discussing how you can use negative reviews to improve your property management operations and customer service.
Getting a negative review can seem daunting. But, it’s also an opportunity.
That review presents you with a chance to identify any issues in your processes that you may not have been previously aware. Maybe you didn’t know something was going wrong until the negative comment showed up.
Here’s what you should do.
Identify Trends
First, read the comment and then take a moment to see if you can identify any trends.
There might be a handful of negative reviews that reference your website, your customer service, or maybe your services in general. Collect the data and analyze the trend to see what those reviewers are talking about and whether they’re right.
Implement an Improvement Plan
When you do see some trends and some room for improvement, put together an action plan.
How can you do that?
We have some suggestions.
- Share the negative review with your client-facing team members and your leadership team. Everyone needs to come together to solve this problem.
- Use the negative review as part of business development plan. You can use this information to make any necessary adjustments to your services and offerings. This is likely to increase client satisfaction and retention.
- Use the negative review as part of future training sessions for those team members who are in client-facing roles. Make sure the people in those positions have the confidence, knowledge, tools, and resources they need to deliver exceptional customer service all the time.
- Acknowledge the review. Respond to it so you can re-establish trust with that reviewer. If there was a specific issue mentioned in review and you can fix it, this is great news. It gives the reviewer an opportunity to either delete the review altogether or to update it with the actions you took. If they do update the review, you can use it as part of your marketing materials. Turn it into a We Listen to Our Clients email campaign. Or, highlight it on your website and social media pages. Use the situation in whatever way makes most sense to you and your business model.
Give Your Clients the Changes They Need
The most important thing you can do with a negative review is to actually implement the changes that your clients want to see.
Make the necessary improvements.
If you have an abundance of negative reviews about maintenance, dig deeper. Maybe the vendor you send isn’t communicating or they’re never on time. Perhaps it takes multiple trips for a single issue to be fixed. That’s very frustrating, and it may tell you it’s time to replace the vendor.
If you notice negative reviews because your website is hard to navigate or the portals don’t function like they should or people just can’t find the information that they need, it’ might be time to refresh the websites. Or better yet, get a brand new website.
We know that not all negative reviews have an actionable request.
And, you don’t want to change all of your business operations because of one negative review.
You cannot make everyone happy 100 percent of the time. This is why it’s so vital to analyze trends. Notice the recurring problems and fix those.
As you know, we’ve been helping our property management clients improve their reputations for years. If you’d like to embark on this journey for your own company, please contact us at Fourandhalf.
