It was only a week ago that my wife and I stayed in a small hotel in Columbus, Texas.
We decided to meet up with our kids and grandchildren for a fun day at a waterpark which was another twenty minutes away in Sheridan.
While at the hotel, it's always my job to go downstairs to get a couple of coffees from the "continental breakfast" café and bring the drinks back to the room while my wife and I get ready for day.
Well, I did make it down to the café' area and found out that their coffee machine was not where it was the day before. In fact, it was missing altogether!
Instead, they had two of those DIY coffee makers where you place a coffee packet into the top of the machine and add a cup of water--you know, the same little coffee maker that are placed in almost every hotel room you've ever visited.
Well, right after I walked into the room, one of the other patrons there got flustered and decided to go get the manager, so as he left, I helped myself to some weak coffee, but hey, at least it wasn't caffeine-free, right?!?
As I was getting my two coffees and was about to head back up to my room, in came the guy with the manager.
"So, as you can see, the coffee maker is gone", he said with frustration in his voice. The manager made an apology and said that their coffee maker was broken. The frustrated customer then got a little tempered and said, "well, you should have a backup coffee machine in case something like this happens."
The customer then said something that stood out like a dagger in the heart of every business owner... He said, "well, it looks like I'm going to have to give your hotel a bad review online!"
Being in this business, I know that any form of negative review is truly going to hurt this business. You see, the hotel doesn't get that many visitors as it's in a small Texas town. It was already struggling to keep the lights on, and I wouldn't be surprised if the employees only worked part-time.
Here's the really sad thing...
According to Microsoft's Bing Co-Pilot (AI software)
"The number of positive reviews needed to offset a negative one can vary, but research suggests that it generally takes about 12 positive reviews to counteract the impact of a single negative review. Some studies even indicate that it could take as many as 40 positive reviews to fully mitigate the damage caused by one negative review.
Did you read that? it could take as many as 40 positive reviews to undo the damage caused by one lousy review, all because a disgruntle patron decided to leave a negative review.
The terrible news is that this happens every single day to local businesses. It could be a patron, a disgruntled former employee... almost any circumstance could cause a negative review!
The only way to offset these negative Nancy's (as I like to call them) is by getting a constant flow of positive reviews day after day and week after week!
If you want to put your local business on top and in front of your competitors, you really need to consider reviews and reputation management.
Just send us an email through our contact page and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Steve Davies - LocalBizNet.com
