The first thing you want to remember when responding to negative reviews, comments or feedback Is to Check Your Emotions First!

I can’t stress the need to do this enough. As business owners we take pride in the products and services that we offer so, negative reviews can be painful to read. This is a totally normal response, after all you are a human being first but the key to success in this topic is... Don’t take it personal! 

Before responding to any negative comments or reviews I urge you to take a step back and gauge your feelings and emotions. Are you disappointed that your customer has experienced this? Are you angry? Embarrassed? Take a step back and assess your feelings towards the matter. Review it objectively from a customer standpoint. If you were angered by the comment take a few hours before responding to cool off and come back to it later.

In lecture one: Intro to becoming a service boss, we learned the three main customer types for this course. “The Rational” The Expert” and "The Rager”. In the spirit of avoiding customer service issues (Lecture 3) you’ll want to have a few tactics in place and preferably for each customer type. 

Make Response Times Visible:

You want to note somewhere on your website or social media pages of your response times. This way, your customers will know what to expect when emailing or instant messaging you and this will also avoid the potential for upset customers. You'll now be setting a proper expectation versus what the customer assumes will happen and as we know, customers can assume a lot when proper information isn't provided.

On average you want to respond to your social media messages, comments, dm’s within 24-48 hours. Email responses should be a bit quicker try to keep those at 24 hours. Website/internet review responses should happen within 72 hours. Customers will be able to see your response times so the sooner the better.

Auto-Responses:

Auto responses or replies are highly recommended. you can set this up using your email settings. There are also cool settings on Facebook that will allow auto-responses if you receive a direct messaging or if you use social media for selling. Otherwise, we highly recommend the following.

1.    Hubspot

2.    GetResponse

3.    Aweber

4.    Klaviyo

5.    Mailchimp

6.    ConvertKit

7.    Autopilot

8.    Contant Contact

9.    Omnisend

Canned responses.

Not all responses will be canned as you may need to tailor your response for each customer (this will be a case by case basis) by now you should have navigated through your customer journey as discussed in Lecture One: Intro to becoming a service boss So,you should have a general idea of potential issues that may arise. You’ll want a canned response for each scenario. Here are a few great examples of canned responses below.A writer over at Colorvaleactions.com received a wonderful email response that Is a must share.

“I email a lot of photographers and get a lot of generic auto-responses. When I saw this auto-response from Stella of Ask Stella Reynoso, I was taken by surprise at how professional and informative it was. Take a peek:”

"Well hello there, awesome person!

Thanks for emailing me, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm a bit slow on the uptake right now (catching up from the Three Nails Photography workshop, currently running my [basic training] workshop, recovering from an injury that landed me in the ER last week, AND having family in town...lol), so give me about 3-4 days to reply before shooting me another email!

I schedule many of my posts on Facebook, or tend to post from my phone during quick minutes of downtime, so while it may seem like I'm always around, I am usually operating out of pocket, and try to only respond to emails when I'm back on a real computer to minimize issues & maximize info.

In the meantime, check out Part 1 of my 3-part blog series detailing my AMAZING workshop experience.

In case you've been wanting to book a one-on-one mentoring session with me, ALL sessions must be booked & paid for by October 31, 2013, and completed by December 15, 2013. These open-ended, free-for-all type of mentoring sessions will be discontinued once all remaining time slots are full to make way for a NEW type of laser-beam-focused business coaching that I plan to debut in January. If you've heard about the magic that is a Sounding Board Session with me, I highly recommend you jump on reserving your date soon before they're all gone. ;)

If you have heard through the grapevine about the LOVE & Cupcakes shop, come and check out what me & my partner Terri have going on right now!

Until then, just sit tight and I'll be cranking out replies as soon as I can get to them. <3 – Stella"

This is a great response no doubt. The writer made it very personal. I don’t know about you, I would have accepted a two-week response time with this type of customer service response.

When do you take a topic or conversation offline?

• "Rager" Customer
• Sensitive customer information that needs to be protected for customer safety
• Multiple Questions which require a lengthy or detailed response

Stay away from canned comments when dealing with "Rager" customers. 

Here is a real time example that was posted on Instagram.

“Hello, I find it very rude that I have paid for your services and still haven’t heard from you. It’s been 2 weeks?!? I see that you’ve also reviewed my site and when I asked you about it, no response. You are rude and unprofessional. I want all my money back and I’ll also be posting this on every social media site.

Upon reading this we can assume that the business owner dropped the ball and the customer is upset, we’d also consider this a “rager customer.” Take this short quiz below to determine the best response. 

A great response would be sent by email or private messaging 

Hello, 

I am very sorry for the experience you have had with my product or service.

I did review your website and have made notes but sadly, neglected to forward you my findings. I completely dropped the ball and i'd like to offer you half of the service fee back along with the consultation would that be okay? 

When responding you want to check your emotions. If this has struck an angry reaction take a step back, consider the situation and come back to it when you’re in a more calm, business mind state. 

Offer something

if the mistake is on your end. We can expect mistakes to happen in business but how you make the mistake "right" is what matters. TIP: Have a reserve of products or discount services that you can offer in these situations. 

Building Emotional Connections

Quoting the happy fox blog, “An emotionally connected customer is three times more likely to recommend your product, company or service while less satisfied and connected ones are 6% more likely to take their business elsewhere. A meld of points 1 and 2, with a dash of encouragement, brings you to the third item on our menu – emotional connect. As the saying goes at Disney, ‘aim for your customers’ hearts, not just their heads’. 

Building emotional connections starts with building trust. Become A Friend or At least respond as such.

Contrary to popular belief in today’s society, It is not just business, IT IS personal. Customers are looking to shop with actively engaged companies who are committed to their customers buying success. 

Business2communty.com

The difference between a friend and an acquaintance is the regularity and depth of your communication. A friend is part of your day-to-day life. You speak often, and you’re familiar with each other’s lives. An acquaintance, on the other hand, is someone you might only encounter occasionally when your paths cross.

In business, customers should be more like friends than acquaintances. You want to stay in close contact to remain relevant to their day-to-day success. This deeper relationship is created using customer engagement. In a nutshell, customer engagement is the connection between an enterprise and the customer forged through communications.