I played golf this weekend with a retailer who shall remain nameless. He shared his disdain for social media because his business had received a bunch of negative reviews. At the risk of repeating myself this guy’s problem isn’t social media it is his unwillingness to address and fix the issues with his operation.
The court of public opinion will judge you on how you deal with problems not that you had a problem. Treat negative reviews as opportunities to show off how much you care about customer service. You should be able to turn most negative reviews in to a winning testimonial for your business. Negative reviews online are a new fact of life for retail. If you are not going to fix the problems in your business model, it won’t be long before you will be having the most successful sale in the history of your company—Going Out of Business!