How not to deal with a bad review
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009PR companies naturally crave good reviews for their clients’ products and are bound to be disappointed when that doesn’t happen.
Different companies seem to have different ways of dealing with bad reviews. Some just take it on the chin, some go cold with the journalist for a while and others simply assume the journalist doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Today I got into an e-mail conversation with the director of PR company who expressed her “surprise” at the bad review* I gave to a client’s product recently. Apparently I was the only one to do so and she felt in future it would be best if someone was sent out with the review units to ensure I was “getting the best” from the devices. She concluded the e-mail by saying “Maybe you weren’t aware of the key features [of the device]?”.
The basic suggestion here was that I didn’t ‘get it’ and that there was no problem with the product, just with me. The fact that allegedly no-one else gave the device a bad review cemented this idea for her, as clearly I was the odd one out for giving an “unnecessary bad review”.
I took issue with her suggestion that my bad review was a result of ignorance and the back-tracking reply was that sending someone out was now the client’s general policy for all journalists, not just me.
It is very rare that a good product truly needs a one-to-one tutorial to make it understandable to the user; in most cases it just means it’s unintuitive junk. It also affords the reviewer something that the average consumer would not have and so risks removing any fair representation of a device a review would have.
For those two reasons alone I won’t be accepting any review units that come with an assistant to “help” me use the device. I also won’t put up with any attempt by PR companies to patronise me into giving good reviews.
* The truth is it wasn’t even a bad review - it was a sub-par review.
Blogs elsewhere
June 10th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I’ve had some companies contact me after bad reviews I wrote on my blog and ask to have them removed or changed. I took great delight in telling them where to go!
On the other hand, writing a bad review can do a company real damage. I wrote one recently for a small local company and I googled their particular service and my review for them came up first. I pulled the review and google result because I thought it would do them too much damage and wasn’t fair on such a small company.
Bottom line is, track what people are saying about your company online and get involved in the discussion if you need to defend yourself or give your side of the story. If people see that you at least responded to negative criticism then they will be impressed..
Don’t EVER ask to have comments/reviews changed, you’ll only further damage your reputation!
June 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
On the other hand, writing a bad review can do a company real damage. I wrote one recently for a small local company and I googled their particular service and my review for them came up first. I pulled the review and google result because I thought it would do them too much damage and wasn’t fair on such a small company.
Of course reviews can be critical for small companies and I think it’s important to always be fair no matter how big the company is. I’m not sure if I’d pull a review for a small company as long as I felt I was fair but I can see why you would and it’s fair enough if it’s of your own accord.
Bottom line is, track what people are saying about your company online and get involved in the discussion if you need to defend yourself or give your side of the story. If people see that you at least responded to negative criticism then they will be impressed.
Don’t EVER ask to have comments/reviews changed, you’ll only further damage your reputation!
Exactly - if people respond to criticism - even if it’s to disagree, it’s better than to try to undermine or wipe the criticism at the root.
People are rarely going to respond well to back-door approaches to get criticism removed nor are they going to be impressed if co-operation is based on such compliance. It’s a lazy and short-sighted way of doing business.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Where can we see this review?
June 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
It was in Business & Finance magazine but hasn’t been uploaded to the site yet.
I’m not going to identify it as doing so would identify the person/company in question and for the time being I’m not willing to do that.