So, you’ve got your first one star review on Facebook…

First things first, DO NOT FREAK OUT!

Okay, I know you’re freaking out.

If you haven’t already had a one star review, basically it’s inevitable. You cannot please everyone, no matter how fantastic you are at your chosen service; whether it’s lashes, skin, makeup, cosmetic tattooing, the fact is not everyone is going to love you. 

And if you’ve been in the game long enough, it’s a certainty that you’re going to get a one star review or someone’s going to be unhappy with something at the salon or your service at some point in the future.

Most of us have probably already had a bad review or some negative feedback from clients in the past. I’ve had a few. I haven’t got a perfect rating on Facebook. I haven’t got a perfect rating on Google. Unfortunately on Google reviews I’ve had a few people that give me negative reviews and they haven’t even been to my salon, which really sucks! And I have tried to report them to Google but usually Google doesn’t care and they just leave them sitting there. Even if they are not about your business or are totally unrelated or don’t even have anything to do with your business.

Personally, If I’m ever reading reviews about any restaurants or businesses because I am interested in going there I do check their reviews. I look to see if they have a perfect score of 5/5 and if they have a few hundred reviews I actually think they are fake reviews. That’s the honest truth. I think I’m old enough and wise enough to know that we can’t and won’t please everyone. There’s always going to be someone that sounds happy with you but aren’t and you don’t think you did anything wrong, they’re still going to leave you a bad review anyway. So I actually think it’s fake when I see a really perfect score. My business has been open for eight years and we have lots of reviews; well over 100 on Google and well over 100 on Facebook and they’re not all perfect. And yes, it hurts. It still really hurts when they come through.

But it’s just part of being a business owner and I try really, really hard not to take it personally. Now that I don’t work in my salon all the time, (I only work in my salon for six hours a week now, sometimes less) and I’m not really “in the trenches” with my team, I feel as though I can look at these complaints or negative reviews a lot more objectively than I would be able to if I was in the salon day in day out worn out from seeing clients and all the happenings that that go on within the business.

Next, DO NOT start replying straight away. This is literally the worst thing you can do. I would advise to just sleep on it. I give you permission to draft up a little bit of a response in the notes section on your phone if you like, but let me guarantee you that the next morning, once you’ve had a little bit of time to digest it, you’re probably going to look at that response that you started writing and you’re going to change a lot of it. So it’s probably really lucky that you didn’t actually send it. My rule is I always give it 24 hours so that I can find out exactly what happened. And like I said, I’m I’m only working in my salon for six hours a week now, so all of my clients are long-time clients. They’ve been coming to me for years. So it’s not likely that they’re going to complain about me; it’s usually there other beauty therapists that work for me my reception staff that receive a negative review.

I’ll usually spend that 24 hours just gathering information and actually finding out exactly what happened during that encounter. Or if nobody knows who it was I’ll do a little bit of research. I’ll look in my appointment keeping system to try and find the client’s name. I’ve mentioned that I have received feedback from people that haven’t even visited my salon. I don’t know if they confused my salon with another or if they were just being mean. One of the 1 star reviews was from a client that just came in and inquired about a brow tint. She left a 1 star review because she felt that we didn’t have a diverse enough colour range to suit her. I responded to that one just saying that I don’t have a record of her having ever attended an appointment in my salon.

I’ll gather the information. I’ll get everyone’s side of the story. And then I will usually try and contact them. I will call the person if I have their contact details and I will try and do anything I can to fix the problem. I never, ever ask them to remove the review. That’s not my goal. I just want to make all of our clients as happy as we possibly can. And it just doesn’t sit well with me if I have a client that leaves really, really unhappy review because they were so unhappy they actually took to the internet and left a 1 star review for us. I will offer them whatever I can to make them happy and I always thank them for their feedback. That should be the first thing that you do if you are contacting them. Always thank them for their feedback. I welcome any feedback about any of my businesses; whether it’s my salon, my wholesale business or my coaching business; I love feedback; any feedback, good or bad. Because it’s a real opportunity for learning and growth. How would you ever know that you’re not doing something correctly or the best you can if someone doesn’t tell you? So I always thank those clients that either leave a 1 star review or give us negative feedback. I thank them for giving me the opportunity to talk it over with my team and do better and then I’ll offer them the service again for free. That’s usually my first thing that I will do rather than offering them a refund straight up. Sometimes you do need to offer a refund., but I like to avoid that by trying to fix the problem first because in my time as a beauty therapist and lash artist, some of the most unhappy clients that I’ve come across, whether it be a colleague that I worked with, and I ended up fixing the problem and making the client happy or whether it was one of my team, or even myself that the client wasn’t happy with.

Sometimes those clients that you help and listen to and really let them know that they’re heard and that they’re understood, end up turning out to be some of your best clients that keep coming back time and time again. So don’t completely write off a situation where a client complains as a completely negative one. You can always take the feedback on board and learn from it and make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Or you can actually use that opportunity to build a really solid relationship with that client going forward and have them coming back for years to come.

Then I would go and respond to the review in the most professional way that I can. For example, if it was a problem with the service that they received, and it’s legitimate, they were in your salon, they came in, they weren’t happy and they left a negative review. I would respond saying something like, “Thank you so much for your feedback. As discussed on the phone, we’re going to rectify this problem by offering to rectify the issue with a free service”. If they never answered their phone when you tried to contact them, or you feel the situation is really a lost cause, you can thank them for their feedback in the response and say something like, “I’ve tried to contact you regarding this. I’d really love the opportunity to welcome you back to the salon and perform the service myself, because this is not the standard that we’re known for. Please give me a call on XXXX”. If the review is completely unfounded, like it was someone that didn’t even come to your salon, you could just say, “Hello, I don’t have any record of you ever visiting the salon. If that’s the case, can you please review your records and contact me if you think there’s been a mistake. Otherwise can you kindly please remove this review as it is not about my business?”

You do really need to remain professional because people do read reviews and if people are looking at your salon and comparing it against someone else in the local area as to where they’re going to visit to receive their beauty services, it really shows a lot of good ethics and professionalism if you do respond to all those negative reviews, even if they are completely unfounded. I think that it shows that you’re a legitimate business person. 

Potential clients will always look at how your business has 4.8 stars out of 166 reviews. One 1 star review won’t affect what they think. I’d still think that was a pretty good business. I would still go straight to the negative ones and read them, but I would be looking at what the business owner had to say in response. So make sure you do respond to them in the best way you can. Don’t do it straight away when you’re angry or upset. Sleep on it. Try and contact the client. Use it as a big learning opportunity and learn how you can avoid situations like this happening in the future.

A way to avoid negative feedback is to actually listen to what the client has to say. It’s not enough to just say to someone after you’ve done their brow tint and shape “Are you happy with that? Yeah, good”. You’re not giving them time to answer. I hear it all the time in my own salon and interactions between my team members and their clients. They’ll ask the client if they’re happy, but they won’t actually give them time to answer. And I’d say that’s probably because of their own insecurity. They’re scared of what the clients actually going to say. But when you learn that it’s not a personal thing. If the client doesn’t like their brows, or their lashes or their makeup or their hair or whatever, it’s it’s nothing personal directed at you. You need to have your client at the forefront of your mind and know that you are there as a service provider, to do whatever they ask  and to make them happy. So nothing is out of the question really. And if they think that their brows aren’t dark enough, and you ask them whether they’re happy or not, you need to actually make them darker. That’s the most important thing you need to do. Even if you’re going to run late into your next client. You need to make that client on the bed happy. If they say no ask them specifically what are you unhappy with. Ask lots of questions. Do not be scared. Let them tell you; let them know that they are heard. Because sometimes some clients just want to feel important. And if they don’t feel important or they don’t feel heard, they’re gonna get angry, and they’re going to be more upset and more likely to post a negative review of your business online.

There’s also the automated text message follow-up. Just a message that goes out to all of our clients three days after they’ve been to the salon. Follow-ups are gold. Even though ours are automated through my appointment booking software, I’ve written it so it’s got a very personal touch and I sign off as Lauren from Allure and I invite them to give any feedback, good or bad. So this gives your client an opportunity to complain directly to you from the get go. Obviously more responses are positive, but with the odd one that isn’t, I nearly always respond in the same way I would do a one star review. I will call them, I will thank them for the feedback and thank them for giving us the opportunity to rectify the issue. And I will offer them a free fix up and perhaps a voucher or something or their next appointment free depending what the problem was and how bad it was and how unhappy they are.

Again, you can’t take it personally. It’s not a personal attack. It’s just that they were unhappy. They had different expectations to what they actually received and it’s up to you to actually rise to that level. 

So I want to know Have you ever had a one star review? How did you deal with it?

Lauren x