Online reviews can be a business’ best friend or worst enemy, depending on if the reviews are positive or negative. It’s a difficult battle because customers often share negative reviews after an unfavorable experience more than they do a positive review after everything goes smoothly. Even worse is that, in the wake of an unfavorable experience, you may lose a customer permanently.

Once a customer leaves a bad review, it could be too late. Customers might not offer the time of day to your brand again, which is why it’s important to be proactive and achieve a resolution in the moment rather than after a customer already feels frustrated or disappointed.

In the Customer Service Trends for 2022 Report published by Medallia Agent Connect, 67% of consumers said they would stop doing business with a brand after only two or three poor service interactions. More than ever, it’s clear that businesses need to provide a superior customer experience to stay competitive and retain customers for the long haul.

Business texting with SMS and MMS messages opens the lines of communication for your brand and its customers. It allows you to keep up with customers, never leaving them ignored or waiting for any reason. As everyone knows, losing a customer means losing loyalty — and that ultimately results in losing revenue.

Business Text Messaging Could’ve Prevented These Negative Reviews

In the spirit of proving how effective business texting can be, let’s take a look at a handful of examples of negative reviews — and then learn how a business text messaging service could’ve prevented each negative review in the first place.

1. Hotel Not Answering Guest Inquiries Pre-Arrival & Mid-Stay

Communication is, unfortunately, not this hotel’s strong suit. Both the guest and their wife tried to call the hotel, but they were put on hold and never called back. Needless to say, this is a poor guest experience that leaves the door to a negative review wide open.

When the guest arrived, the hotel still fell short of expectations to meet the most basic needs. And this review suggests that other guests found themselves with a similar experience.

How this negative review could’ve been prevented: If the hotel is limited in terms of productivity due to a labor shortage or just has other tasks that it prioritizes, software for business texting would’ve still tended to the guest’s needs. The guest just wanted to know if they could check-in early. It’s a simple question, and an AI-powered response could’ve answered this for the guest in a few seconds.

Mid-stay, the guest wanted housekeeping services to maintain a clean room each day. Business texting integrates with platforms such as HotSOS to efficiently alert the housekeepers their services are needed in a specific room, without the need for the front desk to play their own game of ‘telephone’ whether they’re busy or not at the front lobby.

Notice how the guest says they didn’t feel as though they received enough attention from the hotel and its staff. Yet, with a business text messaging service, all of this would’ve been handled with automation that left them with a delightful guest experience to raise satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

2. Gym Ignoring Customer Complaint, Membership Cancelation Request

When you go to the gym for a class, you expect to take the class. In this case, some of the gym’s instructors appear to have a habit of canceling classes and not telling anyone. Of course this customer should feel angry after driving all the way to the gym and finding out a class is canceled. But that’s not the only problem.

In the review, the customer says she called to cancel her membership but no one answered to fulfill the request.

How this negative review could’ve been prevented: Business texting could prevent this type of situation from bubbling up in multiple ways.

The gym could leverage a business text messaging service to communicate with its instructors who could easily inform the facility that they’re unable to run a scheduled class. In turn, the gym then relays this information to members prior to them traveling to the facility under the impression that the class is still on.

As for membership cancelation requests, text messaging can allow a customer to forgo a phone call and send a text message instead. In this moment, the gym could also automate service recovery with a promotional offer that discounts a membership or includes credits to secure a ‘win-back’ opportunity.

3. Restaurant Messing Up a Food Order

Nothing is more annoying than a messed up or entirely missed food order. Just think of this customer when they placed the order. Maybe they hadn’t eaten a meal all day while working late, or perhaps they were hoping to impress a date with some tasty takeout.

No matter the reason, a food order gone wrong is a recipe for disaster.

How this negative review could’ve been prevented: Orders placed over the phone aren’t completely inconvenient, but they certainly increase the likelihood of a botched food order due to several factors. Either party may not be able to hear each other all that great over a phone line, or the restaurant worker couldn’t jot down every detail to perfection.

Business texting simplifies the entire experience. Customers can text in an order, which the restaurant receives directly to its kitchen to get started on. It’ll reduce errors and provide quick, accurate orders for pickup and delivery that makes every bite as good as the last.

4. Car Salesman Who’s Unresponsive

Salespeople, perhaps more than anyone else, need to keep the conversation going with customers in order to close. Well, that wasn’t happening here based on this review.

Aside from just being late to respond, there were times when this car salesman didn’t respond at all to the customer. So, what did the customer do? He chose to purchase his car from a competing dealership in the same area.

How this negative review could’ve been prevented: Rather than using a personal phone number, the salesman could’ve provided the customer with the dealership’s business texting-based phone number. It would enable the entire dealership to handle updates, lifting the workload from a single salesperson and sharing it among the team with the help of AI.

5. Retailer Mishandling a Return & Exchange

In the retail industry, one size typically does not fit all — whether it’s clothing, a smartphone, or another type of product. People want to purchase and use what’s made specifically for their preferences.

Here we have a customer who purchased a pair of jeans and, although they didn’t fit comfortably, still wanted to stick with the same retailer by exchanging for a different size. But the customer service team didn’t respond to her emails quickly, and when it finally did the agent didn’t have her account information at the ready to take swift action.

No personalization? Ouch, that hurts. Product quality and customer service are crucial to earning customer loyalty in the retailer industry, and this clothing retailer should know that.

How this negative review could’ve been prevented: Emails inundate customer service teams throughout the year, especially during peak seasons such as Black Friday through Christmas and during the summer. Business texting, however, could’ve taken on this customer’s inquiry quickly and effectively.

Once the customer sent a text message, the retailer’s business text messaging service integrated with its CRM tool could pull customer data and know the order they’re referring to. It would save the agent the hassle of either hunting down the customer data manually or asking the customer to provide information, the latter of which severely hampers customer experience.

6. Hotel Making It Challenging to Use a Premium Service

Guests sometimes stay at a hotel only for a place to sleep at night, but this guest — as many do — wanted to take advantage of the amenities available. Yet they couldn’t, and it was all because of poor guest experience. In every way they tried, they couldn’t book an appointment for a relaxing massage at the spa — not even the staff could figure it out.

How this negative review could’ve been prevented: Offer all premium services in the palm of a guest’s hands! If this guest could’ve sent a text message to book the appointment, they wouldn’t have faced any hassle to begin with. The guest would’ve had the massage at the spa scheduled in seconds.

7. Property Manager Charging a Late Fee for Unintentional Missed Rent Payment

Late rent payments will occur no matter what, but most residents would find it very helpful if their property managers would issue reminders as to when rent is due. In this review, the resident said she doesn’t have a history of missing payments but started to after moving into her current apartment. Now, she’s getting hit with a late fee for an unintended mistake.

How this negative review could’ve been prevented: Leading up to when rent is due, remind residents of when their rent payments need to be in by. Residents aren’t trying to swindle property managers out of money at the end of the day. In truth, they’re just dealing with a lot in life personally and professionally to the point that remembering to pay rent on time might not always be top of mind.

Use an Intelligent Messaging Platform to Prevent Negative Reviews from Hurting Your Brand

Negative reviews do a lot more damage than you may have thought previously. From driving away customers and hurting revenue, experiences that leave a bad taste in customers’ mouths will severely reduce your business’ ability to grow. But as we just laid out, a business text messaging service can help.

Medallia Concierge is an in-app messaging solution that personalizes and heightens customer and employee experience and builds loyalty. Create opportunities for your brand to engage in a two-way dialogue and uncover deep insights into how people interact with your brand in real-time, allowing for swift service recovery and building “wow” moments that delight.