3 Effective Strategies to Deal with Negative App Reviews

When you’re checking out app reviews about your business, be it on your app store page or on a third-party one, you are bound to get the jitters. As you scroll down and notice that every single review is a positive one, you start to calm down a notch, even feel a bit proud about yourself. That is until that one negative review hits your screen, a severe kick in the guts! Relax, it’s just one review in over 20, you tell yourself. But a couple more turn up and you start tearing your hair out.
Relax; it’s not the end of the world – this time it’s us telling you to calm down. We have carefully crafted three effective strategies that will help you deal with negative app reviews like an expert.
And before you ask, no, we’re not here to advise you on how best to manage your frustration! This is not a psychological health write-up but a concise, detailed yet interesting consumer-handling study.

Sort Out The Genuine From The Fake

Not every app review may be genuine. As your business grows, you start proving to be a formidable threat to your competition. It may be that your competitor has added a really bad review just to scare away your potential users.
In certain other instances, a particular user may have found the price of in-app assets too high. And when he had started to haggle, followed by pointed cussing, you had politely shown him the door. That very user may have penned an unreasonably damaging review just to get back at you. So, how could you separate the genuine from the fake?
You don’t need to go through each and every review for that purpose. Take the first negative review you encounter and pick a keyword that provides a gist of the entire review.
Let’s pick ‘bad service’ in a review for instance. Simply press Ctrl+F, write ‘bad service’ in the dialog box, and hit enter. If there’s just one user who got a bad service, then it may be a one-off or a fake review. Remember, 95% of clients suspect censorship when they don’t see negative scores.
If many users have complained about your service, then it’s definitely a cause for concern.

Reply To The Genuine Negative Reviews

Remember that you haven’t entirely lost the users who have given negative reviews. You should take those comments as constructive feedbacks. However, before working on those flaws, you should reply to the reviewer to let him/her know that you’re taking the necessary action.
According to ReviewTrackers’ survey, about 50% of clients expect businesses to respond to their online review within one week.

As David Anderson, an author at IHateWritingEssays, says, “Communication is the key to forge a lasting relationship with the customer.” And don’t just tell the user that you’re working on the problem. Give them a tentative day/date by which it will be fixed.
That date will be forever etched in their minds. They will visit your business again just to check if you have kept your promise. If you haven’t, then they will stay clear of your services to the end of days. Hence, make sure that you state achievable deadlines in the reply. Be polite and professional, mixed with a tinge of friendliness and this simple response to their negative review will work wonders in your favor.

Time To Work On The Problem

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, if you don’t tackle an issue as promised, you WILL stand to lose that user forever. And a single user doesn’t walk out of a business alone. He/she storms out with a whole lot of potential users in tow. Get that problem solved within the deadline, regardless of the costs incurred. If you can’t spare the time or the resources, hire new employees or outsource the issue to freelancers. If you can’t even afford that much, then put a particular process on hold. Use those resources to deal with the problem immediately.
Are your customer service techniques taking the heat? Is the absurdly complex user-interface of your app giving you and your clients sleepless nights? Or is your product itself faulty?
Dig long and deep, and get to the root of the problem. Try to understand the dilemma of that inefficient employee. Fire them if it’s in their nature to work with laxity. Develop sound solutions to management issues, and replace defective equipment with working ones. Don’t even think about expanding your business without clearing out the bugs in the existing structure. Only then will the negative reviews turn into positive recommendations.

Final Words

Remember – your business doesn’t come crashing down thanks to a few unfavorable reviews. Work on the constructive feedback but ignore the worthless criticisms. You can’t hope to satisfy the needs of each and every user after all! On the other hand, if you do not deal with negative app reviews soon, then it won’t take long for your business to bite the dust. It hardly takes a few minutes to respond to those reviews, a few days to solve the problem, followed by a lifetime’s worth of a steady stream of happy, thoroughly contented customers who will boost your sales in a matter of days!

Author’s Bio: Carol is very keen on teaching new, effective ways of learning. When not freelancing and blogging on marketing and education-related matters, Carol enjoys traveling. She takes immense pleasure of visiting new countries.