How to Deal With Bad Reviews Online for Your Salon?

If your salon spa has received a number of bad online reviews, it might be a good time to look at your salon operation procedures and study up on how to respond to negative reviews. 

An occasional negative review online is relatively simple to deal with and not necessarily a concern.

An occasional bad review can be a plus if you take an honest look at the review and use it to improve procedures in your salon operations.

A complaint or negative feedback can be a plus if it is pointing out a weakness in your operating system.

Pre-internet days, dealing with an unhappy client was relatively easy, taking into account most unhappy clients can be appeased with a redo, a free hairstyle, or a complimentary product or a refund.

Dealing with online negative reviews is a different salon problem.

Always keep in mind; the best form of advertising is word of mouth.

Now, of course, it is word-of-internet.

Great reviews on the net will bring in business.

Bad reviews may turn off business and and distroy your salon's reputation you have worked so hard on.

If you find your salon is attracting a number of ongoing bad reviews, this is cause for concern.  

Table of Content

1. How And When to Respond To a Bad Online Review For My Salon?
2. How Do I Stop Bad Reviews Online?
3. How Much Does a Bad Review Cost Your Salon?
4. Conclusion

How And When to Respond To a Bad Online Review For My Salon?

The internet today is one of the key tools in any salon owner's marketing campaign.

Many potential clients will look at the positives and negatives of the product or service prior to making a buy decision.

When poor reviews are found on the internet, according to studies, there is a better than normal chance people will have more faith in the positive reviews.

Weigh the good reviews against the poor reviews.

If the former outweighs the latter, the simplest and most cost-effective way of dealing with the situation is to try to reduce client bad experiences.

Ask Yourself Why You are Getting Poor Reviews?

• Is your staff friendly and caring?
• Are your prices in line with the service you provide?
• Is your salon the epitome of cleanliness?
• Are your clients made to feel welcome?
• Are their appointments held on time?
• Does there appear to be a high degree of customer satisfaction?

You may find your time better spent improving your salon's overall operation in an effort to reduce bad online reviews than to deal with negative posts by attempting to remove them.

Keep in mind the saying about what happens in Vegas.

A variation is; what happens on the internet stays on the internet, including fake reviews.

Time is Valuable

Look at a bad review as a critique that provides you with feedback on how to improve your operation.

In doing so, using the information to improve a  client experience, you will reduce the number of bad online reviews in the future.

How Do I Stop Bad Reviews Online?

There is only one way to prevent bad reviews from appearing online, and that is to make your salon business, the best it can be.

If you have disgruntled clients walking out the door and voicing their unhappiness with your salon online, you have an issue that must be dealt with.

Business owners who wish to stop bad online reviews are advised prevention is better than cure.

Be honest with yourself about the way in which your salon handles client complaints.

Are you doing as much as you can to address the cause of those complaints?

You can have bad reviews scrubbed from the internet.

Carry out an online search for businesses that will carry out that service.

If you wish to fix the problem of bad online reviews, take the time to read all of your reviews carefully.

Look for common complaints that need addressing.

See if you can figure out if a single client who leaves the salon is responsible for posting a majority of the bad online reviews.

Another question to ask is: are any of the negative online obviously fake?

How Much Does a Bad Review Cost Your Salon?

According to online reports, a single bad review can drive away 1 potential customer out of every 10.

Bad and fake reviews shared on social media pages gain momentum in the search engines and can be detrimental to your salon business.

Recent estimates indicate as many as 70% of consumers are now sharing reviews and critiques online and on social media.

Google is losing ground to Facebook as it seems most Facebook users are always logged on and can quickly voice their dissatisfaction over poor service or poor results by a service provider such as a salon.

Over 55% of clients and consumers regard Facebook to be trustworthy even though in many instances, it is not.

A huge 72% of consumers trust online reviews according to a recent survey

so it is really in the interests of you as the salon owner to be the best you can be and to ensure when a customer leaves they are a happy customer.

A successful salon is one that has a high percentage of repeat clients.

Many repeat clients should be the gold standard for any salon.

As for the dollar cost to a salon, you just have to look at your average sale.

Multiply that by the number of unhappy clients you lose over a month for example.

This is what bad reviews cost your salon. 

Common Related Questions?

• Is it illegal to delete bad reviews?
• What are the consequences of fake reviews?
• What are examples of positive feedback
• Can Google reviews be deleted?

Conclusion

If your salon is receiving a number of bad reviews, you have to ask yourself why.

Do you have disgruntled clients walking out the door and just not coming back?

If so,it may be time to analyse what is making them unhappy and more to the point, why aren't they expressing their unhappiness to the staff or management?

Always keep in mind; happy clients are repeat clients. 

Do you have questions or responses to this article? Connect with us today. We’ll respond to your queries as soon as possible.