You take pride in your business, work hard to do a good job, provide value to your customers.

Then, one day you find a really negative review on Google+ or Yelp! or one of the other review sites.

“Oh no, Mr Bill”, what are you going to do?

If you run a business, any kind of business, you are going to have people who are not happy with your product or service at some point. And some of those people will write a bad review on line.

Don’t beat yourself up over it.

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has a bad day once in a while, so having a bad review first and foremost means you are human.

Feeling terrible about it will not do anything to help the unhappy customer or you.

So what should you do?

First do some research:

Did the customer leave their name–if so you may ultimately want to get with them to see if you can “make it right”, especially if they a regular.

But hold the phone–before you go calling the reviewer, or responding to the review online, do a little fact finding.

Was the information in the review accurate? Are there lessons that you can learn from the critique?

Once you know if there are things you believe can be improved or not, NOW you can respond. Let the reviewer know they were heard (if the comments were so vague you can’t implement any change then feel free to ask for more details so you can improve your business–let them know you appreciate the feedback.) And let them know HOW you are going to fix the situation (if you can) and how you will “make it right” for them.

Will this work 100% of the time? Honestly? Nope.

There are some people who, once they are unhappy with you, no matter what you do you will not be able to make it right.

There are also people who are just plain negative and are never happy with anyone. Fortunately, there aren’t that many of them and your best bet may be to walk away.

And sadly, there are people who will place negative reviews against competitors that are totally untrue. Some you will be able to verify that they are false and you should be able to get those removed. Some you may never get removed.

If that happens, don’t bury your head in your hands. Keep your chin up and keep up the good work. People and businesses who insist in pursuing unethical methods to boost their business will be found out. Instead of putting any more attention on them, turn all you attention to the wonderful customers you already have and the new ones you are getting because of your good work.

Good people win out in the end. Be good people.