I was reading comments on a post recently on a group for multifamily housing professionals and the topic was on best practices to get positive social media reviews from residents. The basic issue that people are finding is that the people who leave negative reviews are often disgruntled residents who decide to “get back” at the community by leaving a bad review-which may or may NOT be accurate!
Can you relate?
Several of the commenters said something I have heard quite a few times as I have consulted and worked with companies nationwide. I’d paraphrase it like this …
We don’t want bad reviews, so we just stay off ratings and reviews and social media.
Friends, business runs today runs on ratings and reviews. When was the last time you purchased something on Amazon without reading reviews?? Do you ever read reviews of a restaurant before you go for the first time?
Look, if people will read a review before buying a $5.00 pair of socks or spending $15.00 on a meal, how much more homework will they do before spending thousands of dollars a year on an apartment? Studies tell us that customers go about 75% of the buying journey on their own before contacting a business! Which means they are trying to gather all the dirt about YOU before they ever call, email or visit you.
So here is my message to you today, don’t be so afraid of negative reviews that you choose not to have any kind of presence at all on ratings and reviews sites. No one like having negative reviews-but in a way having some (not all!) negative reviews actually helps you, because it makes your ratings and reviews seem more “legit.” If every single review was a five-star review, that would look suspicious to potential renters.
All Five Stars?
I was recently in the market for a cell phone case and I came across one where every review (there were about 50) was a five-star review! This looked odd, so I did some research on the “reviewers” to see what else many of them commented on. It was clear from what I discovered that these reviewers were phony bots or just accounts created to provide positive reviews.
The point is the all five-star review, with no negative comments at all, got my attention in the wrong way! So don’t be afraid of a bad review. Use that opportunity to prove to anyone else that might be reading the review that the customer was wrong about you by being professional, courteous and showing a desire to resolve the situation.
Negative reviews are not the end of the world! I promise, they are not. Well, unless all of your reviews are negative-but that’s a whole different story and for another post.
Until next time-thanks for reading!
