Restaurant/Bar Reviews…How Do You Handle Negativity?
You get a great review, published in this week’s newspaper, you want to tell the world. Of course you get your email marketing list together and send it out to all of your customers. But, what do you do when someone visits a review site and reviews you poorly?
Restaurants are being reviewed at almost double the pace of any other category. And the sites are getting a ton of traffic. Look at Yelp and CitySearch in the past year. There are thousands of reviews for restaurants alone and these sites have become the place where everyone looks for reviews before they patron the place. It can make or break anyone’s decision before choosing to go to a new restaurant. So what do you do? Here are some suggestions:
Regulars make for good reviews - More often than not people think to place poor reviews rather than good ones. Remind your regulars, the people that visit you often and love your establishment, to get on a specific review site and tell everyone why they love it. How about sending an email campaign to your list with a link to a review site? It could really help you in the long run!
Read often - You might find that by reading the same thing over and over you could make a change in your business that affects the bottom line positively. Are you being reviewed for poor service? Is it the same server? Are there one or two dishes that keep getting "panned" ?(Pun intended!) It’s up to you to listen to what your customers are saying, then make your changes.
Chime in! - Address concerns that your reviewers have. If the steak is too chewy and you’ve replaced that supplier since last year, go ahead and tell people. Post your own review addressing all of the concerns that people may have had in the past and what you’ve done to correct any. Then invite people back.
Just a few ideas on how to address those nasty little reviews…IF you ever get them.
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I have some friends who were considering offering free coffee and liquer to guests posting a (presumably) fair review on one of the poular sites…I don’t know if they did but it is an idea.
I have noticed that a lot of times that websites like Yelp restaurants and bars can’t truley be judged by comments because they are riddle d with comments from people that just like to complain. Or leave “backhanded comments” starting with all the negative comments and then following up with one last good comment. It seems unfair sometimes to the business.
Why is that we usually remember bad experiences and not the good ones, I went to several places in Manila to do Bar Reviews you’ll be surprised on what you might find in your glass. Anyway I do appreciate people sending their message across the net.