Getting reviews can either be great or concerning. Negative reviews can be hard to read when you know all the effort and work you put daily into your tours, however, they do happen. Not everyone is going to like everything you do, so you need to learn how to deal with the negative feedback you might get. Prepare yourself and learn to take them with grace and successfully for your business.
How NOT to deal with negative reviews
There are three main points to avoid doing when you get a negative review. First, never ignore them, that will only cause them to believe those reviews are true or it will make the writer of the review angry and leave them with a bitter taste on how you handle business.
Second, when you answer, do not get angry or defensive. You need to remember not to engage in a fight with someone who already made up their mind about your service. It is a fight you will not win and could hurt your online reputation with lack of professionality.
Third, do not deny legitimate criticism. If you know something went badly, it is better to apologize and improve for next tours than pretend it never happened. People might even have evidence and if you deny something that is true, the one that ends up looking badly is you. Better for your online reputation and for your business in general to learn how to take constructive criticism and refine your work with it.
What you should do about negative reviews of your tours
As a tour operator, responding to all your reviews shows that you are an engaged company that cares about customer experience and what clients think. This is very valuable for your reputation and therefore your sales. Nevertheless, it can be hard knowing how to reply to negative reviews, so here are a few tips:
- Carefully analyze and understand the nature of the complaint.
- Deal with complex issues privately. Write publicly that the problem may be more complex and contact them or ask them to contact you privately so you can find a solution.
- Report fake reviews.
- Respond in a timely manner.
- Always stay professional and courteous. Even when a customer is out of line, respond in a calm and polite manner.
- Always offer to talk issues over. It will give the visitors with negative experiences a bit of satisfaction to know that the company will do something about the problem.
- Show that you are authentic and genuine. Take negative reviews seriously, as feedback and as your clients feelings and experience. You can even try signing the responses with your name so customers know there is a real person attending the issue.
- Apologize when appropriate.
- Learn from your experience and show clients you care and really try to refine and upgrade your tours and customer experience.
Reviews are feedback to keep improving your tours
Remember that a negative review is just another brick to build something better and a way to refine what you already have. Take the client’s concerns as constructive criticism to keep improving and growing. Sometimes it’s hard to admit when we are doing something wrong or when we could improve some detail of our work, but it just means you’re human and need to keep evolving, so know your hard work and learn to keep refining your abilities with pride.
Lastly, always thank the positive reviews. It is very nice to be told when we do something well, so anytime you get positive feedback, always appreciate it. In order to manage and respond to all your reviews, positive or negative, TourReview offers a dashboard that overviews all the feedback you are getting on every platform and allows you to handle everything from one single place. With TourReview, you can answer every client’s reviews and address any constructive criticism, you can filter reviews by the emotions they are expressing and create weekly or monthly reports on your current activity.
Check out all the benefits that Review Master can provide your tour operator business and how we can help manage all your reviews.
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