Unfounded Negative Reviews
Has anyone had to deal with negative reviews that aren't true?
How do you overcome these? I tried reaching out to the customer directly and got no response. Luckily, it ended up being a net positive because I reached out to other users on social media to ensure they aren't having the same problem and a few took the time to add their own review in defense of the product. Still, it kind of sucks getting a negative review for something you know isn't true.
A related article where the author laments that app store ratings are killing businesses before they have a chance at success.
https://eggonomy.com/blogs/news/dead-before-launch-app-store-ratings-are-broken
This is exactly what happened to me. I should've taken the opportunity to blog about it as well. I guess I'm doing that now here on indie hackers.
It's really unfortunate though because in some sense it goes against the "fail fast" or "do things that don't scale" ethos of indie-hackers. One argument is, should can fail fast as but the product can't suffer due to the speed of execution. In my case, there is nothing wrong the product. I suppose one thing you could do if you find yourself in this position is rebrand and relaunch.
We have very few, but nearly all negative reviews are usually something to do with the perception of the customer, and not really much to do with us or our product. For instance, one guy left a bad review because he didn't read the limits we placed on our subscription levels properly. Another guy because he tried to log on just as we were updating our server and it took him about 5 seconds longer to get to his dashboard so he reviewed us as being 'slow'.
In nearly every case though, we reach out to them. Important - Take a few minutes to cool down. As the guy who wrote our system, it is hard not to take it personally, especially if, in the second example above, I was working long hours to get updates out to the server to fix other reported issues. Take a few minutes, an hour even, to breath and get back to a neutral state of mind, then reach out with no passive aggressiveness at all. Don't make excuses, don't blame - just empathise.
In both cases above (and nearly all other cases), the customer deleted their bad review and gave us a 5 star one instead.
I know for me, I approach apps/tech with the same risk assessment mindset that I've used in insurance. If I see a negative review I look for a pattern of negative reviews and I look for a response from the company. If you responded to the review and it never went any further then it wouldn't impact my opinion/decision.
Hope that helps,
it does!
I've yet to have any more purchases since the negative review, but it's tough to say whether this is because of the negative review or not yet.
Not much you can do about it tbh... i've had a customer extort me that if i don't do their bidding they will post a bad review everywhere. At that point, they lost all credibility from me because even if i fix the issue they still may act in bad faith. Just move on and build a great product and cultivate an audience of good people.
I'm both sorry to hear that happened to you, and glad to hear it happens to others. It sounds like I'm on the right track by reaching out to other customers and ensuring they aren't having similar problems then.
Thanks for your insight!
As we say in Spanish: "The problem never is the Monkey, the problem is the Circus' Owner"
24 hours ago, I went to an Starbucks. I connected to the WiFi called "Starbucks Clients", and internet didn't work at all. So, I added a 1-star review in Google, saying: "Internet didn't work" (because I go for to internet, not the coffee, so, 100% of the service that I wanted, didn't work).
Today, I got an answer saying "You should have asked to the staff. If you go to starbucksclients.com, and you put the password "xxxx", internet will work".
So, what do you think? Did internet worked, o not?
NO. It didn't work. Was internet there? Yes. Was it working? Yes. Was it working for me? No. So, is my review "unfounded"? No. Because internet didn't work for me, the reviewer.
I created an app called NoFilter, that basically there is a map where you can see cool photo spots nearby. What do you have to do in the map? Click on the icon to "Go to my location", and there you can see your spots nearby.
People was sending me reviews like: "It takes to much time to "zoom-in" in my location". In my answer was always the same: "That's an unfounded review. You have to click on the button".
No my friend, they were right. If the button IS THERE, but they didn't find it, so, THE BUTTON IS NOT THERE.
If something is really there, but nobody sees it, so, it doesn't exist.
You have to do something so people can see it.
In the product-development world, this problem happens every single day. So, you have to train yourself to understand that those reviews are real. Always. And is your obligation to fix it. Always.
[Severus Snape "Always" meme here]
The difference is, your negative review gave you actionable insight. In this case I got no actionable insight. When I reached out to the customer I got no response and took to social media to see if anyone else was experiencing the bug (I genuinely would like to fix it if it is in fact a bug), and everyone responded that they hadn't.
My question is, what do you do in this case?
Could you show us how exactly was the review he sent you? Meaning, the text he wrote.
"This thing will UNFOLLOW People you are following just to add new followers. No, I didn't ask it to unfollow anybody. That's bad and now I have to go refollow everyone that I was following before."
It looks like I can't edit my post, otherwise, I would add the negative review for reference there as well.
I'd really love to find out what steps the user took to get this outcome, but since they aren't responding I'm kind of stuck making guesses as to what happened.
I tried to take it as an opportunity to improve the UX, but that's difficult to do if the customer won't respond.
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It's really quite frustrating isn't it? Particularly when you really just want to improve the product.
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The problem with this project is, it's hosted on the google chrome store, so there is only so much info I can provide there in terms of FAQs and support. It's really limiting.
It ended up being a bit of a plus though as our other user's chimed in to give positive feedback and doesn't appear to be effective our revenue adversely.
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"But the positive side is that people wondering why I don’t have 5 star rating will sort for bad reviews, see that, and think... eh, not so bad!"
Yeah that's a good point. The problem is I only have a handful of positive reviews. If 1/4 of your reviews are negative (in this case only 1 of the 4 total reviews) I'm sure that looks much worse than if you already had 100 mild/positive reviews.
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It's crazy, but what we find is that 100% of the >4 star ratings and reviews are from those who never pay for anything. They'll use the free version of one or more of our apps, never consider paying for anything - but will be the loudest in publicly tearing us down. Anyone who pays or would consider doing so hits us up directly for help - chatting to us through our site/extensions or emailing us.
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Yes, i've been doing this as well, but the conversion rate of support to positive reviews is very low.
Anyway, we just got another purchase today. So far the lone negative review hasn't been the end of the world! Who would've thought?
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very helpful and much appreciated!