The reviews you collect with Trusted Shops help your customers to find out about your offer and to have trust in your business. But what effect does it have when you suddenly receive a critical review? Will the trust that has been so painstakingly built up then suddenly be lost?
First things first: When you collect reviews, it is perfectly normal to get negative reviews from time to time. There is a simple reason for this: Even if you work flawlessly and quickly at all times, your customers may feel differently about their individual service experience. In this case, it is perfectly legitimate for your customer to want to share this experience and the thoughts and feelings associated with it with other people and therefore write a critical review.
However, negative reviews do not have the fatal consequences for your external image that you may fear. Instead, individual negative reviews make your review profile even more authentic. After all, your customers know that a few critical voices are part of a credible and trustworthy overall picture. This was also the conclusion of a representative study that we conducted in 2021 together with the market research institute YouGov. According to this study, customers tend to be sceptical about exclusively positive reviews.
So ask yourself this question: wouldn’t you be happy to buy from a shop that had star ratings with an average of 4.91, for example?
Turn negative reviews into something positive
For consumers who are trying to find out about your shop, how you deal with criticism is more important than the individual opinions expressed by a few dissatisfied customers. After all, your customers would like to know whether you will react in a friendly and professional manner even if something does not go perfectly. That’s why it is important to never leave criticism unanswered, but respond to it attentively and appreciatively. This way, you can ensure that even critical reviews can help your excellent customer service shine through.
To support you in this, your Review Inbox gives you the opportunity to respond to reviews you have received. Learn how to respond to a review in this article: What are the main features of the Review Inbox?
The person who wrote the review will be informed about your response by e-mail. But your comment will also appear in your Review Profile. This means that you can describe the case from your perspective, and also show your customers that you take customer feedback seriously and respond to it.
Since your reaction is publicly visible, it is especially important to write convincing responses. That’s why in this article we will give you a few tips on how to write a friendly and professional reply comment: 4 tips on how to react to negative reviews
Can I delete negative reviews?
With Trusted Shops you collect authentic reviews about your service and products. In order for customers to trust the collected reviews, it is important that Trusted Shops guarantees the authenticity of the individual reviews and the overall picture. This implies that critical voices are also allowed to have their say. For this reason, you cannot delete submitted reviews yourself.
However, you have the option of reporting reviews to us that you believe violate our terms and conditions for use. We explain what you need to do for this in your Review Inbox here: How do I report a review?
As soon as we receive your report, our team will immediately check the facts and make a deletion if necessary. In this article we explain in which cases we can delete reviews based on a request from you, and when we cannot: For which reasons can I report reviews?