Rep mgmt: Should I improve or push down negative Yelp review?

I would think more positive would outweigh the negative

I would employ a two phase strategy. First, continue to flood yelp and other rating systems with positive reviews to outweigh the bad ones. Secondly, i'm not sure if Yelp allows this, but you can also "reply" to the bad review and explain the situation. I've seen this done successfully by companies. I would take responsibility, explain that you have corrected the issue, and then offer the person a refund or some other way to remedy the situation.

Thanks for the advice so far. I should also include the reasoning as to why the guy we're outsourcing to is concerned about adding add'l reviews to yelp. His opinion is that adding reviews, good or bad, will help strengthen Yelps ranking when googling their business name. He feels we'd be better off adding no Yelp reviews & work on knocking Yelp off page 1 of google rather than messing with adding add'l reviews.

Thanks again.

Well, seems simple but has the company or the rep management firm reached out to the angry customer in an attempt to make things right/better?

Having negative reviews on Yelp can be harmful for local business and cost business owner lot of bucks. As Yelp.com has proven they will not work with business owners to remove false and misleading reviews unless they violate Yelp’s policy.


So its better to push down yelp negative link from the Search results

One can go with both the activities. You can try adding positive reviews and explain the whole situation to the angry customer. All you need to do is to keep yourself calm while replying to the bad comment, You can also work simultaneously on displacing that negative review by smartly adding that negative search term in those positive profiles created by you.

It sounds like you started in the right place...customer outreach. But it really bothers me that a company would spend hundreds of dollars to make a review go away when they could just turn those reviews into positive ones with that same money. I face the exact same thing with my clients all the time and it drives me insane...it's so much faster and cheaper to make things right with the customer.

So my initial advice would be to reach out again and MAKE THINGS RIGHT. That's why people complain and most will happily remove a bad review if they get the right type of outreach. With that said, your friend may have felt taken advantage of and called the customer without having the right attitude, which made things go from bad to worse. So I suggest you do the outreach for him....that's step 1.

Step two is to start a review campaign with current customers...and businesses should be doing this anyway. Place a sign on the counter with a QR code embedded that says, "Review us on Yelp and be entered into a drawing to receive a $100 gift card." Or you can go with $1 off the current purchase....whatever. The key is to make it an impulse that customers will do while they're waiting to check out, and this solves the problem of bad reviews long term.

Step three is to leave a two sentence response to every negative review. It should be something like, "I am very sorry you had a bad experience with us. Please contact me at your earliest convenience so we can find a solution to make you happy." This doesn't admit guilt and shows everyone that you're the type of company that cares about customers, and it softens even the hardest blows.

Step four is to do the exact same thing for your positive reviews...thank the customer and try to get conversations started. This gives their review even more weight to naturally edge out the bad ones. Your goal is to simply get the bad review to page two, so you need about ten customers to respond to your response or hit the +1 buttons.

Then start an email campaign with a similar offer from step two, and place a homepage banner asking for reviews as well. Honestly, your customers are better off with reviews on their own site as well since they can control them, so it's something to think about moving forward.

I'm guessing you've already done a lot of this, but hopefully it covers a few things you missed. Again, the outreach is key.....save the headaches and just make things right with the consumer.

That's a tough one - yelp IS difficult to move down due to it's traffic AND the fact that users like reviews by nature.

I would try a two pronged response:

1. Reach out to existing HAPPY Customers, explain the situation up front (since they'll most likely see the bad review) and ask them to leave an HONEST review on yelp about the business
2. Build backlinks to existing GOOD content. If you need MORE good content, some good sites to build out are:
   1. Google Plus
   2. Youtube Channel
   3. Facebook Page
   4. Twitter
   5. Pinterest
   6. about.me
3. Try to link THOSE all together randomly

Hope this helps - good luck!


Jeff Lenney