Reviews4 September 20264 min read
How to answer a bad Google review
A bad Google review is not the problem. The silence underneath it is. Here is how to answer one.
The reply is not for the person who wrote it
The guest who wrote it has already left, already told their friends, and is probably not coming back. You are not writing for them. You are writing for the next person, the one holding a phone on a Thursday afternoon, deciding between you and the place two streets over.
That person will read the bad review. There is nothing you can do about that. What they are actually checking is what sits underneath it. A calm, human reply turns your worst review into the most reassuring thing on the page. Nothing underneath it turns it into the last word.
The shape that works
Almost every good reply has the same four beats, in this order.
- Thank them, by name if the review carries one, and keep it to a line.
- Name the thing that went wrong in your own words, so it is obvious you read it.
- Say what you have done about it, not how you feel about it.
- Offer one way to continue this somewhere that is not a review page.
That is four lines. Long replies read as defensive even when they are polite, because nobody writes five paragraphs about something that did not bother them.
Thanks for writing, Sanne. You waited far too long for your mains on a Saturday and that is on us, not on you. We have put an extra runner on weekend evenings since. If you ever want to give us another go, mail me and I will look after your table myself.
The four things never to write
- “We are sorry you feel that way.” That is not an apology and everybody can tell.
- The word “however”. Whatever came before it gets deleted by the reader.
- Your version of the evening. You may well be right. Arguing in public still loses.
- Anything you would not say with that guest sitting at your table.
When the review is not true
Sometimes it is a mix-up, a guest of the restaurant next door, or someone who was never there at all. You can report a review to Google if it breaks their policy, and sometimes it comes down. Do not build your evening around that. Reply anyway, briefly, with facts and without an accusation.
We have no booking under this name and nothing in the book for that evening, so I suspect this may be a different restaurant. If we have that wrong, mail us and we will make it right.
It reads as a grown-up business. That is the whole job of the reply.
Answer the good ones too
Most owners only reply when it hurts, which means the only replies on the page sit under complaints. A wall of five star reviews with nothing underneath them looks like nobody is home. Two lines is plenty, and it should sound like you and not like a form letter.
The hard part is not the writing
The hard part is that the review lands at ten past eleven on a Tuesday, while you are counting the till, and you see it three weeks later when someone mentions it. By then the reply is worth much less. Speed is most of the value here: an answer the same evening reads like someone cares, an answer next month reads like an audit.