I talked to a lawyer who recently got a negative review on their Google My Business profile, and one of the things that they wanted to do was go back and start screaming and yelling at the person and calling them a liar because what they said simply was not true. I had to talk them off the ledge and explain to them that while somebody is leaving a negative review if you respond in a negative way, you only look guiltier.
I want to show you how my company responds to negative reviews on behalf of our clients. As you can see right here, I’ve got a sample. This is actually from a year ago, but you can see this person was not happy with the service that they got.
How We Respond To Negative Reviews
The important thing is that on the bottom is the response from the owner. It’s very important that you respond and what we said is “Thank you very much for taking the time to review our law firm. Input and feedback from all our clients is vitally important to us, and we always want client expectations to not only be met, but exceeded. Per your comments, we clearly have had some miscommunication as there are some inaccuracies of account of your relationship with our firm. This has obviously led to your frustration for which I greatly apologize. I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the matter with you as soon as possible so that we can come to a resolution that is to your satisfaction. Please call me at my office as soon as possible or send me an email with a time that works for me to call you. Thank you.”
The reason that we did this response is not for the person that left the comment. They’re mad. They’re not going to call. They’ve vented. It’s fine. What this response is for is for the thousands of people or tens of thousands of people that are going to see this review when they’re researching our client’s firm. We want to see that our client admitted that there may have been a miscommunication and they accepted responsibility. They said “We care about our clients’ opinions and we want to make it right. Please contact me as soon as possible.”
That is the best way to handle this because anything else makes you look guilty and it makes you look like maybe the person that actually reviewed this company might be onto something here. Don’t copy this exact template, but this is the type of response that you should give when somebody leaves a negative review for your firm.
What If The Review Is Completely False?
There’s going to be issues sometimes when what they’re saying is completely inaccurate. There’s also going to be times when the person isn’t even a client. Actually, family law attorneys get this a lot, where they’ll get a good result for their client, and the ex-spouse goes on and leaves a negative review.
We answer in the same type of way. We say “Thank you very much for taking the time to review the firm. The input and feedback from all clients is very important to us, and we want to make sure that all clients’ expectations are met, blah, blah, blah”, and then we say something like “Unfortunately after checking our records, we have no record of you being a client at our firm. However, we still would like to know why you’re so upset. So, if you would please contact us at the office so we can do whatever we can to remedy the situation or come to a satisfactory agreement…” or something like that.
You want to show that you’re willing to work and that there’s obviously been a misunderstanding. I’ve seen lawyers that go on and call the person a liar and an idiot, and it never looks good. Even if you are right, you never look good.
If you have a negative review, definitely respond to it and respond to it in a manner such as this. How do you respond to negative reviews? Do you take the same approach, or do you do something different?