Wedding Business Solutions

So you got a bad review... now what?

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

Share episode

So you got a bad review... now what?

Confronting a bad review can be daunting. Did you honestly assess the situation? Are you responding out of emotion, or are you considering the persistent quality of your overall feedback? In this episode, I dive into strategies for addressing unfavorable feedback effectively while maintaining professionalism and emotional health.

Listen to this new 13-minute episode for insights on handling bad reviews, maintaining a positive brand image, and the importance of constructive responses.

Episode Summary: 

In this episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast, I tackled the challenging scenario of receiving a bad review. I shared my approach to navigating this situation by first assessing how much of the review is true. It's important to stay composed and avoid getting into a defensive back-and-forth. Instead, I recommend responding in a way that directs attention to the positive reviews we've received, while also acknowledging the guest's experience. By building a strong foundation of good reviews and personally responding to them, we can better manage the impact of negative feedback. I also emphasized the importance of learning from multiple negative reviews, as they can offer valuable insights for improving our services.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/



Mon. Feb. 17th, Las Vegas, NV - Save $100 with this link: https://tinyurl.com/LVMini100

Mon. Feb. 24th, Miami, FL - https://events.humanitix.com/nawp

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

So you got a bad review. Now what? Listen to this episode, Find out. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. Well, it's already happened. It's the first week of January when I'm recording this and I've already gotten my first hair on fire phone call of someone who got a bad review. And it's the first time that that's happened and they didn't know what to do. And this happens to me a few times every year, which is good.

That's only a few times with the thousands or tens of thousands of people that I have contact with or that know about me. But so I'm glad it's only a few times. But it's always kind of nerve wracking for whoever it's happening to because that's why they're reaching out to me. Because if they knew what to do, they wouldn't be reaching out. So let's think about this. The first thing that I do when somebody reaches out is I want you to take a step back and I want to read that review. So find out where it is. Let me make sure it's still there.

And then I'm going to read it. And I read it. Now, I wasn't involved in that situation, so I can sit on the outside of this. And then the first question I always ask is how much of what they said is true? And there is a wide range of answers that could happen from this, from I don't even know who they are. I did a wedding or an event on that day and it was somebody else and they mistook me for somebody else. Okay. And then you have the, well, you know, it wasn't that bad, which is a whole different thing because it's perspective, right? How bad you think it is versus them. You know, again, you were on the receiving end of the money, not the spending end.

That makes a difference. Emotions make a difference. You don't know who's goading them along that you know, to, you know, you should write this, you should write this, you should do whatever. Right? And so that's the first thing I always ask, is that how much of what they said is true. Because it's going to change the way that you answer. And I've spoken about this before, but I thought because it was the first time it happened this year and it's been a while since I spoke about this, rather than you digging out a previous podcast or going to one of my books like Wit, Wisdom and the Business of Weddings, reading A chapter on this. You know, let's talk about this here. The first thing that happened with this particular one is when I looked at the score, the score was 4.9.

4.9 is a great score. So that one review didn't affect their score because I believe they already had a 4.9. So that one, because there's enough reviews there, didn't affect it. The second thing is that it was the fifth or maybe sixth, it was the fifth or sixth review down from the top. So good reviews had already come in to start to bury it. And that's what's going to happen. Now. The last that I heard, according to Wedding Pro, couples on average read 5 to 7 reviews.

For vendors, except for photographers and venues where they read 7 to 9 on average, some people are going to read more, some are going to read less. Very few are not going to read any. But it's over 90% that are going to read reviews. So people are going to look. Now some people might go and sort it low to high, or they might accept the default sort, in which case by the time that one gets pushed down far enough, nobody's seeing it anyway. But really what happened here is even, even with reading it before getting into the how much of this is true? I always go back to the Sesame street song. One of these things is not like the others when I was reading the good reviews. And then I read this one when they wrote a pretty long, long review.

It doesn't fit, right? What this person is saying happened doesn't fit. So regardless of whether some of this stuff was true or not, it, it just doesn't fit. It's out of character for what all of these others have said. Dozens and dozens have said amazing things. And then you have somebody saying the opposite there. So reasonable people will look at that and go, you know what? This sounds like a one off situation. I don't know exactly what went on, but I'm going to believe these 50, 70, 100, 200, whatever, really good reviews, more than I'm going to believe this one. Now, if it's the one that's on top and it's the most recent one, it's a little more believable.

But by the time it gets pushed down some, it becomes less and less and less believable. So that's the other thing. And then, you know, then the question is, did the person reach out to you to express their dissatisfaction? Did you try to reach out to them to find out are they satisfied or not? Or to reach out after they've already posted this and say, hey, you know, what can I do to make this right for you? Because, you know, some people unfortunately immediately go and post their dissatisfaction. I've mentioned before, I post a lot of reviews because of my travel and I will give a business a chance when something goes wrong because I'm not automatically looking for something. I'm not looking for a freebie or something for them to give me anything. I believe as a business owner, I would want to know if something wasn't right. And I want to have a chance to make it right without you going and posting online to let everybody know that you aren't happy. So I would just, I try to extend that same courtesy.

Now if a business doesn't respond or doesn't respond well, that's a different story and that might make me go and post it. So you'll see very few bad reviews from me online because I've gone to the business first and try to give them a chance to at least understand what went wrong. And if there's some way they could make it right, then make it right. So you'll find very few and the ones that you do are usually because they bungled making it right. So first thing you have to say to yourself is that the second is take yourself out of it and say if it wasn't me, if it was somebody that I know and they came to me with this situation, what would I suggest that they do? And what you're not going to tell them to do is to get into a he said, he said, she said, she said, he said, she said, or whatever they said they said. You're not going to get into that. You're going to tell your friend not to do that. So don't do that.

It's okay. If you want to write what you would love to say that you're not going to send, I would be careful. If you're going to put that into an email, don't put anybody in the to field so you can't accidentally send it to them. Or maybe just do it in a word doc or something like that where you can keep it away, where you can just get it off your chest and do that. That's okay. Never respond when you're really all emotional because you're going to say things you shouldn't or word them in a way that might come across the wrong way. And then you have to ask yourself, what am I trying to get out of this interaction right now? Because if they've already posted the bad review, they've done their damage. And what I suggest most of the time, and I did in this particular case, that that person has gotten it off their chest, has said that, and it's probably moved on with their life now.

And you can poke the bear and bring it back up again because in this case they had only posted in one place. And if you poke the bear, they might end up taking that and posting it all over the place and other places. And now you're really playing whack a mole, trying to control the damage here. So the good news here was it was only in one place, so that was also helpful. And then as I wrote, there was the chapter in my book and I spoke about this before, you know, what would you pay to make it go away? You know, if you could write a check and it would all go away, how much would you be willing to spend now? And then if you had had the chance to make it right and they were looking for some sort of a refund, partial, full, whatever, and you didn't take that opportunity, if you could do it now, would you? And then if you do have the opportunity, how much would you pay to make it go away before it happened, right? So if you had that opportunity before it happened, would you be willing to do it even though it's more than they really technically deserve? But does your emotional well being say I should, I want to make this go away and then I can sleep because the pain of writing a check will go away, right? The emotional pain of you hanging on to that bad review takes longer. I, I was doing an event last year and it was a mastermind and one of the people there was, was talking to us about what do you do about this bad review? And is talking about it. And I said, okay, so when did this happen? And everybody in the room was expecting, you know, last month, a couple of months ago, maybe even last year. And it was like five years ago.

And everybody in the room, just like that record scratch sound, just stared at this person like five years ago. Why are you still holding on to this? Because that person has long since moved on and you're the one doing this now. I've said this many times, you can't help how things and people and situations make you feel we're human. They're going to affect you, right? But you do control how long you feel that way. And that's what I said to this one that just happened recently is, you know, how long you hold on to this is up to you because they've already done their, their damage, right? They posted the review and they've moved on. And if they're not answering your phone call, if they're not answering your emails and not answering your texts, they don't want to talk about this anymore. And you just let that sleeping bear lie. Just let it go, right? And what can you do about that now? Now you have a chance about responding.

So have you been responding to your good reviews? And if you've not been now, now, while it's earlier in the year and you have some time, start responding to the good reviews. Remember, people read on average five to seven reviews per vendor, except photographers and venues, seven to nine. So I would say if you can get into about the first 10 or so and reply to them, and reply to them individually differently, personally read what they wrote and respond as if you were speaking to them. And don't just give some generic thanks for choosing us for your wedding or your event, because that can make it worse. Make it a personal response. On some of the sites they will get notified that you responded. Like on Yelp, on Google, last I heard on the Knot and Wedding Wire, they don't notify the couple that you've responded. So you can go back.

Even if it's last year or the year before, you could go back and they're not going to get notified. And you want to do that because you now have a chance of having your personal voice. When they're reading the good review, they can read your voice. And again, it helps offset some of this where if they're reading a bad review, you're going to respond to that as well. But it's not like you just jumped in because there was a bad review and responded. You've been responding all along. If you go to my Google reviews, you'll find that I've responded to every one of them. I think as of this recording, there's 170 of them.

And you've respond, I've responded to every one of them and I've done a personal response. Some people give me more to work with than others. But, you know, I could respond to every one of them and you'll see that it's consistent. So if you've not been responding to the good reviews, responding to the bad is actually out of character. So you want to respond, respond to the good ones as well to balance that out. And then there's a few ways to respond. If it was not your customer, that's an easy one. You can just say, you know, I, I'm sorry that you had a bad, you know, A bad experience.

But I think you might have posted this on the wrong business because I did an event on that day and it was for a couple that doesn't have your name and was in a different city or whatever. So I, I think this actually was for someone else. And no, hopefully they'll see that and move and go, you're right, that wasn't for you. Okay. If they're writing stuff that isn't true or again, it's a relative value of how bad you think it is versus they think it is, you don't want to get into that pissing match. Right. You don't want to do that in writing because that's going to be there forever. So you know things beyond your control.

Like I remember somebody telling me about, you know, the power went out in the neighborhood. Not, not because you blew the power, but the power went out and the venue sends everybody home. That's not your fault. You can bring that up, but you still want to take responsibility that they're not happy. In this particular case, I said, I just don't think getting into the details of this that some of the things they said aren't true or didn't go down the way they said it. I think it's just going to make you look defensive and petty and the way to respond. And I've said this before, I've written about this is something to the effect of thank you for taking the time to read our response. As you can imagine, there's always more than one side to every story.

All we ask is you take a look at the dozens and dozens of five star reviews we have from couples like, just like you to show you the experience that we think we can do for you and your wedding. We look forward to the opportunity. And then you put the mouse down and you go away and take a walk or get a drink or whatever it is you want to do to decompress, take some deep breaths. But that's how you do it, is you got to walk away from that and say, I'm not going to get into the pissing match and I'm going to show people I'm not going to get into that. And I'm going to point them to all the great stuff here to balance that. Now if you have a lot of bad reviews, that's market research telling you there's a problem and you need to start looking at that. And if they're complaining about you, you need to look in the mirror and say, hey, what am I doing wrong here? That's not satisfying these customers who have trusted me with their because one person, again, out of character, many of them. There's a pattern.

And if there's a pattern, you need to start looking at that and saying, this is now affecting me because I'm losing future business because of people reading this, because of other people not being happy and something's not right in the system. So I hope this is the only call I get like this all year. I'm afraid it may not be, but I hope it's one of very few. And I hope this helps you if you're the one that gets that, or if someone, you know does, maybe to couch them a little bit on that. And if you do get it and you want to reach out to me, please do. But I hope you don't. Thanks.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


People on this episode

Contributor

Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

Host