Most people are fairly lazy and don’t like to write that much. The act of publishing web content – even in casual forms like tweets or blog comments, is usually a pre-meditated, conscious decision rather than a spur-of-the-moment reaction. By the time most people get to writing something up online, they’ve usually done a bit of research and thinking. Understanding psychology can help you know how to handle negative online reviews and prevent new ones from appearing:
Here are 8 of the most common emotions that lead to negative online reviews and personal defamation:
1. Sadism
Some people enjoy hurting others. The feel so small and weak that lashing out at someone else gives them a sense of God-like power and satisfaction. They don’t have the skills to try and make anything for themselves, so the excitement from “tearing someone down” is about as much as they have to live for.
How to handle / prevent it: If someone is gets great pleasure out of writing negative opinions, most rational approaches won’t work. Some people have declared war and attacked them back until they relented, but be careful!
2. Revenge
Some people believe that two wrongs make a right. They believe that they have suffered some kind of injustice, and that the appropriate thing is strike back at you.
How to handle / prevent it: Don’t do things to make people mad at you — even at great cost. Balance every business, marketing and custom service decision you make with “Is this going to get people mad at us?” and “What will be the potential cost of getting these people mad at us and having them publish their experience online?” Make your decisions generously and accordingly.
3. Sabotage
Some people will attack you to make themselves (or their own product) look better. Lies are the weapons of the weak, and some people will lie to help make themselves look better.
How to handle / prevent it: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you are in a cut-throat field or competitive business, you especially need to invest in online reputation building before any problems arise.
4. Extortion
Some sites like RipOffReport.com have a crooked business model of encouraging people to complain or defame businesses, and then they collect “retainers” or payments to make the information less visible or to give the owners more control. Other people will threaten negative reviews to try and milk you for free stuff.
How to handle / prevent it: There’s no easy or inexpensive way to handle extortion. You’re faced with two difficult choices… 1.) Pay the company to make the information go away, 2.) Try to engage in reputation repair. Next time you start a brand or business venture, plan ahead and build a strong reputation that is more impervious to external attacks.
5. Altruism / Compassion for Fellow Customers
Some people aren’t mean-spirited, but they have this honest, conscientious desire to prevent people from ever going through the same kind of discomfort they had.
How to handle / prevent it: Monitor your reputation online, and immediately respond to any complaints. Directly contact the people who complain and offer them incentives to take it off. If you can respond directly to the review or comment, make it seem like their dissatisfaction is a radical exception or freak occurrence.
6. Chiming In
Some people aren’t initially motivated to write anything bad, but when they encounter a negative blog or review, they feel compelled to leave their own experience. This causes the content on the page to expand, and having more words and phrases on it will cause it to rank for more search terms. Then more people see it and link to it, and the stronger and more permanent it becomes.
How to handle / prevent it: Build your reputation before problems arise. Then monitor your reputation and handle negative comments properly and promptly.
7. Confusion
Some people bought your product or service, don’t understand how to use it, and therefore they proclaim it “sucks.”
How to handle / prevent it: Invest in ultra-user-friendly FAQs, technical support documentation and videos. Be honest-to-a-fault when selling your product, and explicitly state what it can do and what it cannot. Prominently display a number that people can call if they need help or have questions. Join a external customer-service site like GetSatisfaction.com and promptly address & clarify misconceptions.
8. Frustration & Desperation
If you have a customer service system but it is slow, poorly trained or inefficient… people will get intensely frustrated. And they may express their frustration online. Andy Beal says it best:
“The biggest mistake is simply not having official channels in place to allow your customers to complain. Most disgruntled customers post to blogs and Twitter because they feel like they are not being heard by your company. They get frustrated with your lack of customer service and they think to themselves, “I’ll show them, I’ll post a negative review on Yelp/Twitter/Blog.”
How to handle / prevent it: Invest in prominent, unmistakable “official channels” for people to communicate with your company. Make sure all responses are promptly responded to and customer satisfaction is a core value of your company. Having a “broken” complaint box or hotline that isn’t answered is far worse than having no official channels at all.
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