Can I remove a bad Facebook review on my company page?
As a Facebook page Admin or Owner, you cannot simply delete a review, whatever reason you have. But you can report it to Facebook if you think it doesn’t comply with Facebook’s community standards.
Many of us have been there right? We’ve got a great performing Facebook page for our company and our engagement is excellent. We’ve got great reviews and everything is performing as we’d like it to. Then, suddenly after months (or even years) of great reviews, we get a shocker; one star and a totally deflating written review.
Unfortunately, if you want those great reviews, you have to take the “not so great” too. As indicated above however, if it doesn’t comply with Facebook’s standards, you can report it and see if Facebook themselves will remove it.
You can turn off the option for people to review your company on Facebook
You can also “turn off” the ability for people to provide reviews on your page altogether. To do this:
- Go to your page
- Select “Settings” in the top right corner
- Select “Templates and Tabs” in the menu that now appears on the left hand side
- Scroll down to “Reviews and turn them off
Why you should keep your Facebook reviews option available
About 70% of Australians (2018) have a Facebook account. That’s a huge potential audience, right?
And just like Google reviews, a huge percentage of the Facebook audience place significant trust in what others, particularly their “friends” say and think.
When someone leaves a review on your page, their friends ordinarily get a notification. And as we know, users put significant emphasis on what their friends think.
Therefore, your customers are helping build your brand awareness with their reviews, resulting in a bigger potential engaged customer base.
And here are a few “big numbers” from Crowd Learning Hub, that should suggest reviews are critical to your business’ success:
- 95% of online users read reviews. That’s huge.
- 72% don’t take action until they’ve read the reviews.
- Displaying reviews can increase conversion by 270% (this is dependent on industry and what you determine a “conversion” to be)
- If there are two similar products/services, consumers are more likely to buy from the one with more/better reviews
This a just a handful of very powerful statistics and there are plenty more to back up driving reviews of your business.
So, we encourage you to leave the option for Facebook reviews open on your page. But just like our earlier article “Why should I develop a plan to drive Google Reviews for my law firm?”, it’s also important to be proactive about driving positive reviews on your page. That way, you can bury that one bad review with hundreds of great reviews.
How should I respond to a bad review?
There’s no denying it, it feels like a slap in the face when you get a bad review; particularly if you think it’s unwarranted.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who say nothing when the service they received was great but will go all out across multiple mediums if they think they were hard done by.
Many businesses do not respond to reviews at all; good or bad. That’s not a good strategy. We recommend you respond to all your reviews. With the good ones, it’s pretty easy. But with the bad ones, what do you say?
Some of our top pointers for responding to bad reviews
- From an internal perspective only, determine if the review is warranted or not. Was your service up to scratch? Were you slow to provide your service? Was your communication timely? Etc. Gather all your information before responding.
- Always respond to online reviews – even if they’re bad.
- Make sure you are calm before responding and take the emotion out of your response
- Keep your online response short but ensure they’re aware you’ve thoroughly read their concerns.
- Show empathy, but not necessarily sympathy. You understand they’re not happy and you should acknowledge this. It is not an acceptance of “guilt” on your part.
- Do not engage in a confrontational manner.
- Invite them to bring further conversation off-line; by phone or email or an in-person meeting.
Example of responding to a negative review
Hi Mary, thanks for taking the time to leave your review which, as I’m sure you could understand, I was disappointed to read. I was very sorry to hear about your experience at ABC & Co. It’s certainly not the level of service we aspire to deliver. I’d really like to discuss this with you and see if we can assist you further. Please feel free to contact me directly on 8888 8888. Regards, John Smith, General Manager, ABC & Co.
In summary
- Keep reviews open on your Facebook page (and anywhere else you’re receiving reviews)
- Respond to all reviews – good, bad or indifferent (and respond in a timely manner)
- Be respectful when responding to bad reviews
- Implement a strategy to drive reviews
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