Here’s A Really Bad Idea: Sue Customers Who Write Negative Reviews About Your Company
Whether you’re an executive at a large real estate investment trust (REIT), a local community manager or a single owner of a multifamily apartment community, it hurts when a resident goes on a tirade about your community.
The Pros and Cons of Insourcing Reputation Management
As a communications director at one of the largest public REIT’s at the time, I helped put together one of the first insourced reputation management programs in the industry.
Key Elements of a Rock Star Review Response
Responding well to an online review is more involved than you might think at first glance. There’s a lot of customer service and public relations theory working in the background that has to be incorporated into a few short sentences.
Silence is Deafening: Any Response is Better Than None
Let’s get one thing clear from the start – we’re not here to advocate poor responses. But even a bad response is better than no response at all, at least in the world of reputation management.
Emotional intelligence required in reputation management
That’s what makes multifamily reputation management so difficult to navigate for anybody who works for an organization they love and believe in. The moment you read a negative review from an angry resident, you feel it to your core, whether you were involved in the situation or not. You might feel angry, annoyed, hurt, sad, confused or any other negative emotion for that matter.
A Layer of Sincerity: Add a Signature to Your Review Responses
More and more apartment operators are taking the proper step of responding to any and all reviews, but many are coming across as insincere. That’s because the most frequent mistake teams are making when responding to reviews is failing to add a signature.
Online Reviews as Free Market Research
Many community management teams are quick to dismiss the validity of negative online reviews, particularly if they perceive them to be unfair. However, themes are often revealed when closely monitoring a community’s online reviews.
Reputation Management: It’s a PR Thing
Reputation management is as old as public relations itself. You might even be able to argue that they’re synonyms.
After all, that’s the job of the public relations professional – to manage the reputation of people and companies in every communication channel possible.
How to Properly Manage a Negative Online Review
Multiple studies indicate that those scouring review sites will generally side with the reviewer. So when a malcontent resident aggressively takes their thoughts online, there is a more effective way to handle it.