Kind Words Under a Low Rating

Praise with two stars on top

The review is long and warm. The crew was polite, the work was excellent, the owner explained everything. Then the last paragraph: the truck left ruts in the lawn. Two stars.

On Google, Facebook and most review sites, the stars come first. They sit above the text and feed the average shown beside the business name.

The owner reads the praise and feels misjudged. Everyone else sees two stars, and many never read further.

Both reactions are understandable. Only one of them reaches future customers.

The complaints that cause it

• A late start, with no call to say so.
• A mess left behind on the lawn, the driveway or the floor.
• A surprise on the invoice, however small or fair.
• A promise forgotten, such as a callback or a missing part.
• Nobody answering when something went wrong.

The third does damage out of proportion to its size. A charge the customer did not expect makes them doubt everything else on the bill, even when the charge was fair.

What readers take from it

A careful reader often trusts a mixed review more than a string of perfect ones. Detailed praise with one complaint sounds like a real customer.

What they want to know is whether the complaint is a one-off or a habit, and how the business behaves when it gets something wrong.

The reply under the review is where they look for that. It is written for them, far more than for the reviewer.

Only the reviewer can change the stars. Arguing for a better rating in public, or offering something in return for one, makes things worse and breaks the rules of most review sites.

The reply is the one part you control. Used well, it turns two stars into evidence that the business listens.

Thank them for the specifics

Name what they praised. "Thank you for mentioning how carefully our crew worked around your garden" confirms the praise to every later reader.

A generic line such as "thanks for your feedback" reads like a template, and suggests the review was not actually read.

Use the reviewer's own words where you can. If they praised the driver's patience, say patience, so the reply plainly answers what they wrote.

Two specifics are plenty. The point is to show you read it, not to repeat it back at length.

Own the one complaint

Say it plainly, in your own words: "We left ruts in your lawn, and we should not have." No mention of the rain, the narrow gate or the weight of the truck.

Explanations may be true, but in public they read as excuses. Readers want to see the business take responsibility, not win the point.

Then one sentence on what has changed, and a direct number for anything further. Settle the details by phone, not in the reply.

A worked example

A portable toilet rental company with four trucks serves building sites during the week and weddings, festivals and backyard parties on weekends.

Last summer the mother of a bride wrote a long review. The units arrived spotless, the washroom trailer looked lovely in the photographs, and the driver was kind to her elderly father. Two stars.

The last paragraph explained why. The service truck had crossed a soaked lawn to reach the back garden, and left two deep ruts the family was still raking out weeks later.

The owner's first draft of a reply mentioned the rain, the narrow gate and the weight of a loaded truck. All accurate, and it read as an argument.

The reply that went up thanked her for noticing the driver's care with her father, said plainly that the ruts were the company's doing, and gave the owner's number to arrange repairs.

The habit was the real fix. Bookings now include a question about soft ground and gates, the trucks carry ground mats, and units go to back gardens on a dolly when the lawn is wet.

When and how to reply

Reply within a day or two, while the review is new and before many customers read it with no answer beside it.

Not the same evening, though, if it stings. Write the draft, leave it overnight, and read it again as a stranger would.

Where possible, the person whose work was criticised should not write the reply. Someone else can take responsibility without defending their own work.

Fix the habit, not just the lawn

A review like this is information. The customer has told you, for free, about something your crew does that customers notice.

Repairing one lawn settles one complaint. Changing the booking questions, the checklist or the quoting habit stops the next customer writing the same paragraph.

Tell the crew about the review, the good parts first. The people who earned the praise should hear it, and they are the ones who will change the habit.

Read the reviews together

Every few months, read all your reviews in one sitting, the five-star ones included, and note every complaint, however gently made.

The stars are averaged into one number. The complaints are a list of habits, and the same one turning up twice deserves more attention than any single rating.

Kind reviewers are often the most useful here. They mention the small problem precisely because everything else was good.

The counter-case

Sometimes the complaint is not fair. The charge was in the quote, or the delay was the customer's own. Even then, thank them for the specifics and correct the facts once, calmly, in a sentence.

And a small complaint already fixed may need only a short reply: thanks for the kind words, sorry about the late start, it has been sorted.

What does not change is the order: specific thanks, plain ownership of the problem, then a change to whatever caused it.

Replying this week

1. Read the whole review before replying.
2. Name two things the reviewer praised.
3. State the complaint in your own words.
4. Say what has changed since the job.
5. Give a direct number for anything further.
6. Keep the reply to five sentences or fewer.
7. Fix the habit that caused the complaint.

Step seven is the one that protects the next review. A good reply settles one complaint in public; a changed habit stops the same complaint arriving again.

A review that goes further and accuses the business of wrongdoing needs a different reply, covered in a review that accuses the business of a crime.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.