75 - How to Handle Negative Google Reviews

Rich: Oh, how do you come back from a negative Google review, Caitlin?

Catelin: I don't know. I barely know how to come back to work after the holidays. So.

Rich: That can be challenging. We can't, I can't

Catelin: discuss how to come back from anything. Yeah. I

Rich: can't help you with coming back after the holidays, but, um, we are going to talk about negative Google reviews.

Rich: Cause they can really screw your business

Catelin: if you don't

Rich: deal with it.

Catelin: Did you know that one of my favorite hobbies is to leave glowing Google reviews for, for businesses that give amazing service?

Rich: That I think is one of the tips.

Catelin: Is it really?

Rich: Ask for those, you're, you know who your evangelists are, evangelists, God, am I drunk?

Rich: No, it's, I'm drinking water. Um, yeah, so we're going to explore that this week. Um, but speaking of drunk, I think this one would do it for you. The, uh, brown sugar cranberry bourbon cocktail.

Catelin: I found this one. I'm really proud of it. You did,

Rich: which is surprising to me because it does sound like a bourbon drink that you would.

Rich: I might actually try.

Catelin: Uh huh. I love anything, um, like, like brown, browned flavor, like browned butter. I like a molasses cookie. I like brown sugar. Like the, the richer kind of depth of flavor that's more than just sweet.

Uh huh. And

Catelin: cranberry is one of my favorite holiday flavors. Like, hands down. No questions asked.

Catelin: So, so the

Rich: brown sugar simple syrup and the cranberry. We'll get you over the hump of the brown liquor.

Catelin: Yeah. Because neither of

Rich: us are really brown liquor drinkers.

Catelin: Mm

mm.

Catelin: No. No. I prefer to subscribe to the um, aspirational Ron Swanson quote that says that clear liquor is for rich women on diets. And mostly I just like to drink clear liquor and I aspire to be wealthy.

Catelin: Okay. But I don't really want to be on a diet. So.

Rich: Diets are never fun. Mm All right. So this one came from cheese gal, right?

Catelin: Yes. She's gal. com. She, um, used to be the Nashville cheese gal. She had, I think like before COVID had a couple of like storefronts or at least a storefront, um, as a, I was an early follower on, on the Instagram, but she was the, an early purveyor of like the charcuterie insanity, like

crazy

Catelin: grazing boards and, um, crazy tables.

Catelin: Yeah, exactly. Uh, so this recipe is three ounces of bourbon, two ounces of cranberry juice, not cranberry cocktail. That's a really important point, uh, to, to, uh,

Rich: note. Very different beverages.

Catelin: Exactly. One ounce of fresh lemon juice and, uh, three quarters of an ounce of the rosemary cran brown sugar simple syrup.

Catelin: And that's actually, this is a pretty easy one to, uh, bring together. I know sometimes this, the simple syrups can be a bit involved, but this is just equal parts brown sugar and water, um, boiling until the sugar dissolves. Turn off the heat, throw in a few sprigs of rosemary and some cranberries and then just steep that for like 20 minutes.

Catelin: Um, just a quick, simple infusion, but, uh, once that has cooled a bit, uh, rim your cocktail glass with some of the simple syrup and dip into brown sugar, add a festive ice cube if you're feeling like it, you know, the cute little, like, molds with a little sprig of rosemary, you can freeze a cranberry in there if you really want to, not required, uh, Then you're just going to pour your cranberry juice, your bourbon, lemon juice, and the simple syrup into a shaker full of ice and shake well, and then you strain into your glass and cheers to a new year.

Rich: So did they have this, um, cause I don't have a visual obviously, was it in a rocks glass or a Collins glass or?

Catelin: I think this was in a rocks glass.

Rich: Yeah, I think I could go with either potentially, although a tall glass of bourbon might not be a great idea.

Catelin: Not my favorite. Not my, not my frave it, as we say in our house.

Rich: Well, I'm excited that you found this and, um, the Cheese Gal was able to I think I have

Catelin: all of the things except the rosemary. And quite honestly, I could kind of like take or leave rosemary in some things.

Rich: Ooh, I'd like rosemary a lot. Yeah,

Catelin: yeah. And I

Rich: like that when you, when you're working with it, it stays on your fingers and you can just smell them.

Catelin: Which

Rich: is, uh, what was that, Mary Catherine Gallagher, Smells Your Fingers.

Catelin: So, the original superstar. Yes, yes, yes. All right. Uh, well, I, I look forward, I, on a rosemary note, I think we've got time for a tangent, right? Sure. Isn't that the whole purpose? I, when I lived in Honduras, I know these are my favorite tangents, or your favorite tangents.

Catelin: I love them. There was, like, wild rosemary growing up the mountain behind, uh, One of the other houses that was I think unoccupied at the time And so one of my roommates would just she'd go up and like pick rosemary and I had never because we came from like a like a hamburger helper and like a Hamburger helper home really is all is what you need to know Uh, I had never seen like a fresh herb before in my life.

Catelin: I was like, I'm pretty sure that's just a weed.

Rich: I mean,

Catelin: I don't know if I want to eat that. Yeah, exactly.

Rich: I mean, I feel like a little bit of rosemary in your hamburger helper would probably give it a little zhuzh. Like it'd be,

Catelin: Yeah, I mean, I think the point at which you're eating Hamburger Helper, there's no, there's no room for zhush.

Rich: Yeah, you're probably not buying fresh herbs. It doesn't hold up

Catelin: either. When I was pregnant, I, my cravings were all like home, home cooking. So it was like a lot of like roast beef, mashed potatoes. But at one point I was like, all I want is some frickin lasagna noodle Hamburger Helper. And Tyrell was like, I don't think that's a good idea.

Catelin: And I was like You don't, you don't know me. He was right. It didn't hold up. So.

Yeah. I

Catelin: hold on to the memory of Hamburger Helper, but I don't, uh, I've only ever revisited once like five years.

Rich: Yeah. Brian told me he made Kraft Mac and Cheese the other night for himself.

Catelin: That's what we had for dinner last night.

Rich: And he said after two bites, he was sorely disappointed in himself for not making something different.

Catelin: Oh, here's the, here's the tip. Cause we don't, I don't keep like dairy milk really. I keep like oat milk because it lasts forever and heavy cream, same reason. The shelf life is a lot longer. So the trick to a blue box to make it like better is, um, increase your butter by one tablespoon.

Catelin: So if you're doing a box, you do five tablespoons of butter and then just a splash of heavy cream instead of the milk until it like comes together.

Rich: And more butter is always good. Correct. I would think also you could take, you know, maybe like a cup of Gruyere and melt it there too. That'd probably make it better.

Catelin: Again, at the point where you're going to put Gruyere, like that's too much. You shouldn't be paying 33

Rich: cents for your box of mac and cheese.

Catelin: I think they're like 99 cents, maybe a dollar 29, depending on when you, if you get the, we get the, like the multi pack. So they're like slightly less than a dollar a piece.

Catelin: Thanks. How much more do you want to talk about, uh, child diets? May I also recommend you pair it with a vegan corn dog?

Rich: I, I feel like, no, that's not going to happen for me. Oh, you can't tell the

Catelin: difference on a corn dog. I would guess, yeah, that's true. It's

Rich: just processed something with flavors. Correct.

Rich: Yep. Alright, well, let's take a quick break. And we'll get back to, uh, child eating. No, I'm kidding. We're going to get back to fraudulent reviews or negative reviews on Google and talk about what to do with those, including fraudulent one.

Rich: We're back.

Catelin: We are. And again, we're, we're back, but

Rich: I know, I know it's been hard getting in the groove again. Um,

Catelin: I said that the third, the Thursday, Friday after New Year's, I was like, this is practice.

Rich: Oh, it's practice

Catelin: work.

Rich: I hate a midweek holiday like that. Yeah. Drives me crazy. Fourth of July on a Wednesday?

Rich: Waste. Should always be on a Monday or a Friday. Every holiday should just be shifted to a Monday or a Friday always, and we should have a four day weekend for sure.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: Oh, well, um, Do you

Catelin: know what's, do you know what's fraudulent? Mid week holidays. That should be fraud. Mid week

Rich: holidays. Let's give them a good negative Google review.

Rich: Where's that holiday listing? Um, yeah, so negative Google reviews drive people crazy, um, and

Catelin: drive business owners crazy. Yes, true. I also think that there is a, and this is me as a consumer again, I think that's the lens that I typically bring.

Rich: You are one.

Catelin: There is. It's certainly something to be said for when you're reading about a business and you come across like banana pants reviews.

Catelin: For me, I'm like, I'm going to discard that. I'm going to throw that out because like, that seems. It's legitimately insane. No offense to those of us who struggle with mental health issues. I am.

Rich: I don't know. I always am suspicious. Like, like a restaurant that's got like three and a half stars, I'm like, okay, I'm going to dive into this and see what's going on.

Rich: And so, so sometimes you will find that consistently they're just getting like 2, 3, 4 stars and that all the comments are the same, and it's like, okay, that's legit. But every once in a while you'll find out, oh, they have four reviews and two of them are one star from people who hate them. Have never been, been, have never been to the

Catelin: restaurant.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: So it's like, yeah, I'll go give it a shot. Yeah. So I am a full disclosure. I am a Google guide. I dunno if you knew that. Oh, what does that even mean? My reviews, uh, carry weight. Not really. Um, I'm just encouraged to review and I get points that I don't think I can spend on anything. I just get points.

Rich: Oh, they've

Catelin: gamified it for you.

Rich: Yeah, it's status. You know I love a good game. I love my points. I do

Catelin: know that you love it.

Rich: I mean, it's like airline points. They're just not really worth anything anymore. Um,

Catelin: I think I am also Maybe like a local guide.

Rich: Yeah. It's a Google local guide. I think I actually had talked to you about it because it actually, your changes and edits to things, the more you do, the faster they can happen.

Um,

Rich: because they trust the guides more than the random public. Um, I would never leave a fraudulent review for anybody of course. Um, but if that does happen, like, and it does a lot where, um, You want to say it's, um, you know, a negative, a fraudulent review because they never came to my business. Well, Google doesn't see that as fraudulent.

They may

Rich: have wanted to interact with your business or had a call or something that happened. You have to meet one of their six criteria,

right?

Rich: Offensive language, which is a really easy one. Sometimes when people are going off, they got the swears in it. You flagged that fraudulent off. It goes, uh, spam or promotional content.

Rich: So trying to promote something else, uh, off topic remarks. Um, so if you're a hair salon and they're talking about how they had dinner at your house and the dinner was really crappy, that is off topic has nothing to do with your business, uh, private information. So they dox you. Phone numbers, addresses, things like that.

Rich: Um, conflicts of interest or reviews from employees. Occasionally a review from a direct competitor can get in here, but they don't always take down the competitor reviews. Um, and then fake content or misleading claims. So you've really got to hit one of those. And when you report it, you actually have to tell them why you're reporting it.

Rich: Um, so, yeah. Um, Just be clear. Like, I would even call out the pieces, you know, in these three sentences, they use offensive language, you know, they've shared a phone number here, whatever, whatever. Um, and specify very clearly, with bullet points if you can, how it violates their policies. Not your opinion.

Rich: Google doesn't care. They don't care if you hate the person, if the person had a disagreement with you. You have to show Google how it violates their policies. Um, and if it truly does, um, they will take it down. I've seen them take down, um, fraudulent reviews before and had a few taken down. Um, just because you don't like it, Or the person hates you.

They've never been to your business. It doesn't mean it's not

Rich: true. And Google doesn't care. Yelp can be similar, we're talking about Google today, but Yelp can be very similar. They have slightly different, um, different considerations or different violation terms. And Yelp is rumored to also help take down negative reviews if you pay them.

Rich: So, uh, if you're like a Yelp Premium or Yelp Plus or whatever it's called business, um, what I do know is they will allow you to surface positive reviews toward the top and they bury the negative ones a little bit, but there's rumors that they also will remove them. So Yelp will probably email their call because I'm sure they're listening.

Catelin: I bet they are.

Rich: All right. So, Caitlin, you get a negative review that you don't like, but it's got, it's made some good points. So, and Google's not going to take it down. What the hell do I do?

Catelin: I think that this is, um, this is just like being a human as well, right? So we have to find the part of ourselves that can receive criticism and, uh, probably you already knew that about your business, if I had to guess.

Catelin: If you're an involved business owner, you probably already know. That's one of our weak points and maybe I should talk to that person about, you know, their service or their approach or whatever it might be. Um, but really it's just like, thank you for the feedback. Um, I'm going to try really hard to fix that.

Catelin: Or, um, do you hear the humming from my heater?

Rich: A little bit. It's not that distracting. We're good.

Catelin: Okay. Okay,

Rich: so yeah, and I think um, you want to jump on it quickly, right? Like you want to be responsive fairly quickly Um and positive reviews as well like thank the positive reviewer invite them back, you know engage When you see a business owner actually engage with the review You actually know, like, oh, it feels legit

or they also

Rich: care, like they're going to jump in there and talk about it.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: So you can apologize if there's a reason to, um, if you're like, you know, I'm sorry, we weren't on our game, our game that day we were, you know, we had a couple staff out of it's not how we want to do business. I really do hope that you'll come back. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I think

Catelin: what I, what I appreciate the most is like, We're sorry to hear about that.

Catelin: I'd like to follow up with you. Please email or call or that type of thing because I think it shows a more sincere willingness to like meet the customer where they are to where it's like if you say, Oh, like, I appreciate that things can't go right all the time, but I don't want to hear about your staff shortages.

Catelin: Yeah, it becomes an

Rich: excuse, right? And I don't want excuses. So you kind of have to own it, not make excuses. Um, stay professional, don't get defensive. But I do think the other thing that's a benefit of the offline thing, and you can do this with negative social media comments, too, you stop the issue and you avoid the pile on.

If you take

Rich: it offline, you've handled it. Presumably, if that person doesn't come back and complain again, you've actually dealt with it in a way that they work. The other thing that I've done before when I've had to deal with that, and I worked for a company that had a whole lot of negative social media posts way back in the day, um, We would always, if we resolved it, we would ask the person kindly if they would be willing to go back to the thread and just respond.

Rich: To our request for a call to say thank you. I really appreciate that. We worked this out. Don't give details just thank you I appreciate you working this out with me.

Catelin: Yeah,

Rich: um, we would give away free shit Like update or

Catelin: edit your reviews as well, too Like you can go back to it and say like update I you know spoke to manager x on this day and They resolved my complaint or you know, I appreciate whatever

Rich: like And also be careful about like if somebody does a three star and like you reach out to them or something and make it worse They might come back and change it to a one star.

Rich: Like I talked to this person and they're absolutely terrible So sometimes, you know, but I think a three star is there's just people who will give you average no matter what It's like the NPS score, right? Nine or ten are Promoters and an eight is basically the same as like, you know, A five.

Right.

Rich: But some people just give eights, they're like, everybody's an 80%, I'm never gonna be a 90 or

a 100, um,

Rich: and it is what it is.

Rich: But I do think, be sincere, be factual, um, you're probably not gonna go viral for your bitchy funny answer like some restaurants do, um, odds are really, really against you for that happening. Um, so, uh, definitely. Also,

Catelin: don't you have more important things to be doing in your business?

Rich: Oh, right. Keep it tight,

Catelin: keep it profesh, move on to the next thing, the next fire you've probably got to put out somewhere, you know?

Rich: And! A great way to not have to put out a fire, but to spend your time is ask your good customers and clients for positive reviews. If they had a good experience. So it's one thing that we do when we get, we put on our net promoter school and anybody who's a nine or a 10, we do it every six months. I think with our clients, if they're a nine or a 10, they'll get an email.

Rich: And it actually checks our database to see, do they use HubSpot? If yes, it sends them a link to our HubSpot profile to be like, would you be willing to make a review here? If they're not, it sends them a link to our Google profile to say, would you be willing to give us a review here? But you can also just ask, um, a lot of businesses, um, will do like little favors, like if you, um, if you give them a positive review, they'll give you a People used to do punitive things if you gave them a negative review, like your dog can't come to daycare if you give us a negative review, and it's like, no, that's not legal.

Rich: Oh, yeah, there were things in agreements even. We had one with a dog daycare where, um, they threatened to sue you for thousands of dollars if you post any negative reviews online, and those have all been thrown out. It's like, you can, free speech people, free speech. Um, but your best bet is to ask anybody who's really enjoying what you've got.

Catelin: Because free speech is, um, not actually, like, business or personal. It, free speech only pertains to the government infringing upon your speech. So, um, that's different.

Rich: Yeah, but I mean, I got it. Okay.

Catelin: I will, I will not allow us to be purveyors of misinformation about constitutional rights.

Rich: No, it's about though, can you sue somebody in the court for saying something factual about you can't,

you can't,

Rich: it's not something that's going to go through a court and you're not going to win.

Rich: So those have all been thrown out. Now, if you're being slanderous or libelous, there are laws against that. And, you know, that is going to be a problem. Um, but yeah, those people who had a good time, had a good experience, um, just ask him to leave a positive review. It's helpful. If you tell them, if you remind them of what they did or what services you provided.

Rich: Um, because it just, it's almost writing the review for them, but not, you know, we're so glad you enjoyed your dinner for six last Friday night. And, you know, your feedback that your entrees were superb and the service was stunning. Would you please copy and paste this into a Google review for me? No, you just basically say, if you would love to, you know, please click here and give us a review.

Rich: Um, we got caught in the review thing for a prize at Inbound, Caitlin, remember? We

did. We did

Rich: the G2 review for, um, HubSpot. Yes! You've got it! There

Catelin: she is! Because we got

Rich: these giant Yeti tumblers that are like 50 bucks. They're not cheap. We legit, like, had good things to say about HubSpot. We didn't, like, lie or anything.

Rich: Um, but yeah, they verified. I

Catelin: have a terrible, I can't lie. I can't do

Rich: it. Same. And they verified we left a review before they gave us our tumblers. Um, so, do it quickly. So, within 24 hours, generally after the experience, or at the point of sale, some people have little cards that they hand out with, The receipt that says if you had a good experience, please review us.

Rich: If you didn't have a good experience, let me know because I want to make sure you have a good experience. Make it easy. Have those links on your page. I know we've got a couple of clients who have an easy way to do it. Leave us a review link and those can go out in email as well and also just you know, talk about being a small business There's a lot of people who care and want to support small businesses versus large giant multinational conglomerates And just let them know like, you know, your review is helpful, you know helps my business helps our community.

Yeah

Rich: A little guilt, just a little guilt, like a pinch.

Rich: Like when you told me to buy books from a local bookseller and you would go pick them up instead of Amazon. And I agreed, even though they were a little bit more expensive. Because do

Catelin: you know supporting the local bookstore? Do you know what they rounded up? My most recent, 'cause they give a gift card if you, I think it's you get a $5 gift card for every $50 you purchase from them.

Catelin: Oh, nice. They rounded up my last gift card because they said I take good care of them. .

See?

Catelin: Right. Actually, you know what? I need to go write a review for them.

Rich: I was just gonna ask if you left them a good review. They should have asked you for the review.

Catelin: They're, they're so lovely. I love my local bookstore.

Rich: Yeah, and I think when you're, when it comes to promoting your business, especially with Google Reviews, being humble is okay, but like not so humble that you don't ask. You gotta ask for what you want.

Catelin: I think that's a real midwestern trick that you're speaking to there, too. That's like, oh, we're just doing, it's not a big, we're just doing our job.

Catelin: It's just not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah,

Rich: you want your business to grow? Yeah.

Catelin: Everyone's action item after this episode is to go find a positive customer interaction and ask them for a review. Yeah, I think that's great. That's our action item for this episode. Yeah.

Rich: I, I, I think that's a great way to end it then.

Rich: It's your

Catelin: homework. Yeah. Uh, as always, you can find our agency at antidote underscore 71. If you have a question you'd like to send our way, you can visit ctapodcast. live and uh, even better. You can leave us a voice message on our hotline. I'm still, I'm still asking. It's right up there with asking for reviews.

Catelin: 402 718 9971. And your question might make it into a future episode and you would be the lucky owner of one of our freaking adorable cocktail books.

Rich: So gorgeous.

Catelin: You could, it could be you.

Rich: All right, so if you get negative Google reviews, um, Report them if they're fraudulent, but make sure you, it falls into one of Google's fraudulent categories.

Rich: Respond promptly and be like, uh, profesh, as Caitlin said. Don't get defensive, um, explain the situation, try to take it offline. Um, and then the biggest one is, uh, The best thing to do about negative reviews is dilute, dilute, dilute. And the more positive reviews you have and ask those customers who, you know, are good customers and clients for positive reviews, it's going to help you.

Rich: If you do get a negative review, it's not gonna have as big of an impact on your. business. Um, so yeah, so that's it. Um, and go have some crayon bourbon. That sounds delicious. Brown sugar, cranberry bourbon. Um, and next week we will be back with the pink lady, which sounds very interesting. We're going to talk about optimizing your content with AI.

Rich: Um, we've talked a little bit about AI before, um, and Zach, uh, has been using AI to help him, uh, optimize and organize content. And so we'll talk a little bit about that next week and learn what a pink lady is. Cause we're ladies.

Catelin: One of us is. I think that's

Rich: from, I think it's from Little Britain if I remember.

Catelin: Who?

Rich: Cause we're ladies. They have like mustaches and they do this so that no one can see their mustache. I think it was men trying to get into the pub for ladies night or something. I don't know.

Catelin: That reference has not landed for me.

Catelin: I'm so sorry.

Rich: Alright, we'll talk Little Britain another time. We'll see

Catelin: you next week!