Why You Get More Negative Reviews
Do you ever feel like it’s incredibly hard to get positive online reviews, while the negative reviews just pile up? You’re not alone. It has been found that negative events are much more likely to cause people to leave reviews than positive events. Even a single issue can be enough to trigger this negativity bias. Some have said that just one negative interaction is so detrimental that it takes 40 positive interactions to make up for it. So, for every one poor review, you certainly need to impress quite a lot of customers to keep things even — not to mention getting ahead.
Why does this happen? Below are a few factors to consider.
Not All Negative Reviews Are Your Fault
First off (and this is frustrating), the customers may leave bad reviews of your product due to something that is actually their fault — they just don’t see it that way. For instance, someone may leave a review saying a blanket is “way too small” even though the exact size is written in the item listing. The real problem is that they didn’t read the listing and assumed they knew the size of the product. It’s best to make descriptions as clear as possible, but you can’t always stop people from making their own assumptions and then being disappointed when those aren’t met.
People Expect a Good Experience
The other thing to remember is that customers are spending their hard-earned money on products and services, so they expect a positive experience every single time. If they have one, they’re probably not going to write a five-star review. That’s what they expected, so they’re not taking any extra steps. They’re happy with the product; they just don’t tell anyone. But those who have a negative experience also expected a positive one and are highly likely to write a negative review and tell as many people as they can.
The Average Isn’t Really Accurate
What all of this means is that the average reviews for most products are wrong. They don’t reflect the actual experience of the full customer base. For instance, using the ratio above, imagine that you had 82 customers. A full 80 of them had a positive experience. The other two had a negative experience, and they both wrote reviews. Anyone reading that rating thinks that your product may not be satisfactory but it’s actually satisfactory 97.5% of the time.
Review Management Services
If your products are being held back by negative and inaccurate reviews, which often show up on your social media profiles, we offer terrific review management and social media management services here at Content Customs. Contact us now to learn more.