Episode 035 - STRR - 7 Ways to Handle a Bad Review

It’s bound to happen sooner or later… a bad review.  While you can do your best every single day, you will never be able to make everyone happy all the time.  How should you react when you get a bad review?  What should you do?  What should you say?  Michelle has some great advice for this blessing in disguise.

Plus, contest details are inside this episode!  Enter to win BIG!!  Go and Grow! 

Transcript of this Episode:

Hi, this is Michelle, the master of money mindset, and you are listening to BNB dash boss podcast.

And in today's podcast, we're going to be doing a replay because it's Friday, Friday is replay. And the replay we chose today was the one that went with Monday's episode. So this is the replay of how to handle a bad review from the short-term rental revenue podcast. This is extremely relevant. It kind of goes hand in hand with Monday's episode.

So I wanted to get it in here right away for you. And let you take a listen, but before you do, I want to remind and you, our show today is brought to you by audible. Audible is where you get your audio books online and get a 30 day trial into the audible membership for free. By going to audible trial.com forward slash S T R revenue that's audible trial.com forward slash.

S T R revenue. You'll get your first audio book for free and 30 days into the audible membership just for trying us out. You'll love audible right [email protected]. You can find our $7 courses available for you to try out. Find out how to cohost, how to do rental arbitrage or how to invest in real estate.

We're all three, by going to B and b-boss.com and click on our store and you'll find our $7 courses right there. Try us out. You'll love it. You'll love those courses and they're only there for a limited time. So do it also, don't forget our contest. We've got our contest running right now in every week.

We're picking a winner. And everyone's names are going to be put into a drawing at the end for a final prize of an Amazon Dodd with a little clock on it. And your guests will love that. They'll be able to walk right in, ask Alexa to connect to their account, and there'll be able to play their favorite music, ask for the weather or whatever else they want to ask Alexa to do pretty darn awesome.

And I would really greatly appreciate. You going to iTunes and leaving me a five star review. I appreciate it. So please do take a picture of it. Send it over to me at Michelle at BNB dash boss. Let me know that you did and we'll enter you in those drawings and in today's podcast, we're going to talk about how to handle a bad review.

Yes. You knew it was coming the bad review. No matter what business you're in, you can have a hundred. Five star reviews and there's going to be somebody you can not make happy. And you're going to get a bad review. I'm sorry. It's just going to happen. Wherever people can leave reviews. There is that one person that has to leave a bad review and sometimes bad reviews are for a good reason.

So you need to know about the many ways. So regardless of what the reason was, you got a bad review. Think of it as a blessing. Think of it as inevitable, it was bound to happen. So a bad review is quite similar to getting a new car and hoping that. No scratch will ever occur. We'll always have that wonderful new car smell.

And if you're a parent, I have five kids. So I remember several new cars and you're thinking this is wonderful. It's beautiful. I love getting in this car. It's so new and nice and clean. And then one kid would just be all over the back seat. And you're like, there it is. There it is. The first time somebody pukes in your car.

You're like, man, this is it, man. I love that car smell. Like it was a new car. Now it smells like taco bell fun trip, but it's going to happen. It's always going to ding your car in a supermarket with a shopping cart. You're going to walk out someday. And there it is. And you're like, oh man, he kept it new for sometimes for years, I had not a mark on my excursion for, I can't even remember like 10 years or something.

I have this excursion that I've had. Since 2004, 2005, when it was brand new and I'm serious, I had it way more than 10, some odd years. And then my 18 year older took my car out and he had totaled two of our vehicles. Henny just crashed the whole side of that car in, and it never had a scratch on it. Never had a scratch until he just smashed the whole side in.

And it is, it's a sick feeling. It'll happen someday. Sometimes after a week, sometimes after months, years, yes. It's definitely bound to happen. So just know it's going to happen. It's a blessing, no matter what. And the reason why is if you get a bad review and it's unwarranted, you can maybe make somebody life better with the way you react to the review.

If they're a mean terrible person and they're just leaving bad reviews all over the place. That's highly unlikely that that's going to happen, but if it does, you can leave a nice review. And we'll talk about that. I'll tell you about that later. But the second reason that it happens is it's meant to happen.

It's especially good. If you get like a four star out of five star review, and let me tell you why. If someone stay is almost perfect and they leave you a four-star review, there's something that you can do to improve your property. And you need to know what that is. You need to find out a lot of times, whatever the review is, it's going to tell you this would have been perfect.

Had it not been for what find out. And a lot of times you'll be able to fix it and you'll always get a five star review now. One thing we do is when we have a lot of properties, we have a VA who does our reviews and reads our reviews and leaves a review for us and having a virtual assistant do your reviews is good, except for, I need to know if there's error a review.

That had a less than perfect score. So they know to contact me right away. If there's anything less than a five star review, I need to know what it was, what was going on that way I can fix it, but virtual assistants are great because they can answer every single review. And I recommend that you always, always answer every single review.

You reply with gratitude. That's super important before we even get to the how to handle it. I'm just wanting to give you some ground rules for reviews. I also train my clients and my customers and my guests to leave reviews. Every correspondence we do with a potential guest or a future guest, we make sure that we mentioned five star reviews.

I'm not sure what the name of the movie is it, but it had will Smith in it. And he was a. A con man, an artist who went down to new Orleans and he was trying to get this guy to randomly pick a number. But throughout the day he had put this number all over the place for this guy to see he had it on jerseys and.

He had it on, you know, carts with, you know, the, the guys from the hotel. Like he just put this number out there all the time. So that somehow that number was stuck in the guy's mind so that when he randomly picked a number, it was there. We randomly do that to our guests. We leave comments, we take our five star reviews.

Seriously. We feel very lucky or blessed to have five star reviews. If we can't make your stay a five-star one. Let us know right away and we will fix it. Everything has five star in it. You want to get these people ready to leave you a five star review? So you need to kind of train them and do like a, you know, a Jedi mind trick on them, constantly getting them ready for that.

But you also want to make sure that you're never surprised by a review. A review should never be like holy cow. Like, I don't understand. How did they only leave a two-star review? You should know what's going on with your guests at all times. So there should never be a surprise bad review. You should know.

The reason you should know is you should be in constant contact with your guests. Did you check in, okay, do you have everything you need? How was the service? How was that? You just check in with them and they'll let you know, they'll shoot a text right back to you and say, Hey, we got in really great, but guess what?

There were only three sets of towels and the set of six. We have three bathrooms in each of them only had one set of towels, things you can big, so you can do it right away. And you always want to hear them and then get back to them right away. Air. Conditioner's not working. Get on it, send a maintenance guy out there right away sheets.

Don't look like they're clean. Get your team out there right away. Change the sheets. That's a little tip where you too is. A lot of times people will find one hair on white sheets or white towels hanging up and they go absolutely crazy. My cleaning teams have these little myths. They have like a sticky pad on them and they just brush everything down before they leave.

They brush all the white towels. They brush the bedsheets. They just make sure that there's not a hair on anything. So it's not only are they putting clean stuff down, but people get grossed out by a piece of hair. And obviously there's going to be somebody with long hair that. Unfortunately, it will get on there.

That's why we just have them take those precautions. Because if somebody did find a piece of hair on a clean set of towels that was sitting or hanging in the bathroom, you would have to go and replace that entire set of towels. And I'm not kidding. That's exactly what you should do because you have to keep them happy.

You have to make them know and realize that there would be nothing that you put out that wasn't clean and fresh and ready for them. So you have to rectify that. And a lot of times it might be something that you don't know what they want. Right. So if the air conditioner is not working and you're in Florida and it's humid as you know what, and 90 some degrees out with 90% humidity, if somebody calls you or texts you and says, The AC is not working.

You, you know what needs to be fixed, right. You're going to go. And you're going to tell your, your maintenance guys to get out there and get on the AC right away. And you're going to have them bring a bottle of wine or something with them to rectify the situation. But let's say they did find that piece of hair on a pillowcase or on a towel.

You send your guys out there, you're send your housekeeping out there to replace them. But at the same time, you need to ask them, what can we do to rectify this when you're talking to them? And they say that this is wrong. You say, tell you what, we're going to send somebody out there with clean towels for you.

Is there anything else we can do to rectify this situation about it and be very apologetic? We are so sorry. We're sending someone out right away. Always. We are so sorry. You really want to apologize because you need to let them know that you hear them. You understand why they're upset and you're fixing it.

Is there anything else you can do before you ever get a bad review? All those things you should have taken care of you, right? That should all be in place. So when you do get a bad review and it will happen, sadly enough, it's going to happen. But when you do get a bad review, you're not going to be surprised by it.

You're like, eh, I saw that coming now. Here are my rules for handling a bad review. Okay. Number one, do not take it personally. And it's like, I know everybody's like, oh, but it's my business. And I had this great five-star review thing going. I had all these people and I had nothing but five stars and I understand completely, but do not take anything personally.

It's very much like the Don Miguel Ruiz says. Book the four agreements. One of the agreements is not taking anything personally. And I think honestly, all four of his agreements would be a great book for you to read when it comes to owning a business and dealing with people. But the not taking it personally is probably one of the hardest ones that anybody has to deal with.

They take everything so personally, and what people do when they leave a review, it's really not directed at you. It's whatever they had gone through whatever day they had, whatever situations they were in, whatever place they are in, in life, led them to leave that bad review. It has pretty much nothing to do with you.

You're probably just the straw that broke the camel's back in that situation, they probably had crappy service somewhere, or they're tow run over at the gas station or something. Something happened. If you take everything on as being a personal attack against you, you're going to have a miserable, miserable life.

So don't take it personally, get that book too and read the book. We'll put a link up to it, but don't take it personally. Just take it with a grain of salt, right? It wasn't you, it was them also number two, be kind, be kind to these people. You have no idea what they went through. You know, what if they just got terrible news about somebody they loved?

Like I said, all these different things could have happened to them throughout the day or throughout the week or throughout the last month. And you were just the first place they could vent and get it helps, you know, your hair on the towel. That was just it, you know, and they just, it could have been quite a release for them that they had been holding in there.

You have no idea. Why they did it or what they said, but be kind in your response whenever you respond, be kind and remember that you don't know what was going through their head when they wrote it. Number three, and this is really important. And I always say it to my people. I take full responsibility for everything complete and full responsibility.

I take complete and full responsibility for my cleaning company. I take complete and full responsibility for the air conditioning units and the parking situations outside and the sun that didn't shine the entire week that they rented in Orlando when they thought it was going to be sunny. And it rained every day.

I mean, I take full responsibility, even if it's things I had no control over, like the sun and the rain. Right. The thing is this is your business. And because it's your business, you are responsible. You may not be able to make the sunshine, but you are responsible for making your guests happy. And if there's something that you could do, for instance, when the sun doesn't shine, we have little umbrellas and ponchos in our closets for our guests that come in to Florida because it rains a lot.

And we want to make sure that they can go to the parks, rain or shine. It really stinks when they get there and they think it's going to be sunny every single day. And it rains and rains and rains. And they're like, man, we didn't even get one nice day, but if they can open a closet and hanging, there are some ponchos, Hey, we've got these ponchos for you to use, you know, feel free.

And they go, well, that's nice. I mean, they left us ponchos. That's pretty cool. Like what other place does that? So if you can do things like that, if you can leave people, things, any little touch that you could put out there to help people have a better day, you can't control the sun, but you can do your best to make people happy.

Right. And it is your business. You are responsible for everything. So take that responsibility. And when you talk to them, take responsibility, say, I am so sorry for that. That is. Completely on me. You know, obviously don't say it's raining out because they're going to say, oh, now you're just being facetious.

And you're like, ah, no, I was being honest. But if somebody, you know, says it, you know, we haven't had one sunny day since we've been here, say, oh, open the closet door. We've got ponchos in there that might be able to help you out or something that obviously they can buy their own ponchos of the park. Or they can go to Walmart down the street, they got $2 ponchos there.

You can put those $2 ponchos in your property and it's going to make them just as happy or even happier that you did that for them. You can tell them right where they're at. But the thing is, if you can take responsibility, when they called they feel better, they're like, yeah. See, they knew that they knew that it wasn't gonna, it was gonna rain the whole time that we were here.

And he, sorry. And he left some ponchos, then they'll start to see that. That was silly for me to think that they were in charge of the rain and the sun. When I was here, they'll start to see the error of their ways. Once they calm down and things will make them calm down, but you taking responsibility for everything really helps out.

It really helps the situation and it helps them to see that they're probably not being as reasonable as they probably could be. I think it diffuses a lot of bombs out there that could explode when people blame them for something it's like, they'll say there's no parking spaces, you know? Oh, I got back from the park at 1230 at night or two o'clock in the morning.

And there were no parking spaces. And then somebody who wasn't taking responsibility would say, well, if you get back at a reasonable hour, you come back right after the park closes, then maybe you could find a parking space or something. They would throw it back at them. Do you see how that might just make them more and more angry?

Yeah, but instead you say, gosh, I am so sorry. We haven't had this happen before I will get on it. We'll see what we can do, you know, to make sure I'll get the security guys. If you ever get there late again, check in with George, he's going to help you find some place. He'll follow you. If he has to, you know, with his little golf cart and make sure that you get back to the unit.

Without having to carry anything or having your family walk too far, you could drop your family off at the door and George might take the car or whatever you're going to do everything you possibly can to take responsibility for something that even you don't have any, you know, weigh in on. And you're going to put that on your shoulders and make them feel better.

That's the way to handle it. That's the good way. So you're being kind. You're not taking it personally. And you're taking full responsibility. Number four is focus on the good focus yourself. Not them. Don't try to focus them on the good yet, but yours up when you see it, you know, just realize that when you see the bad review go, there's so many more good reviews than bad reviews, and this will pass.

When you focus on the good and you, you're loving and kind, and you're doing everything you can to take responsibility. And you're focusing on that. It seems to me that it's like focusing on gratitude, even when things are being thrown at you, that more things to be grateful for more things, to be happy for com.

It keeps your emotions up and it keeps your attitude high. And that in turn helps them to absorb that attitude or that, you know, vibration, whatever you're putting out there. So keep that in mind, keep in mind that this will pass. Focus on the good it's almost it's over, or it is over. They left the bed.

Then I wanted to say, know how to handle threats. This is number five. There are going to be, and there's not too many of them out there, which is a good thing, but there are going to be people who threaten you with bad reviews. So let's say we'll use the, the hair on the towel. You know, if you don't get over here and you don't change out these towels right now, Or you don't do this or do that.

They'll tell you, you know, we're going to leave a bad review. They'll, they'll threaten you with a bad review or they'll tell you right away, they'll say, well, what can we do director about, well, I want a free night stay. I want you to comp this whole week. And they've been there, you know, a week. And this was the first day they got there.

And there was one little hair on it. Are you going to comp a $2,000 a week for one little hair? You really want to have a handle on how you're going to handle people like this have a plan, a plan of action. Unfortunately, this is a real life thing that occurs nowadays. There's a lot of people out there who are looking for a free ride with everything.

I mean, I see it. I see it a lot when I go out. I see it. Especially when I'm in Florida, I see entire families where the mom is just screaming at the top of her lungs at up. A manager and just doing her best until they finally give her a free meal. I mean, that's what she wanted. She wanted a free meal. And so her being very loud, not being afraid to be loud in a crowded restaurant and the manager not wanting to continue and disrupt everybody else's meal just calms her the free meals.

There are people out there like that. Now I don't usually get them on. What's really cool about. Airbnb is that you can see the reviews that people have left before they even stay with you. When you look at their profile, you could see the reviews that they leave, and you might want to look at that, especially when you're starting out, you're going to be not as free and easy as you are later on.

I only take people in my place that have had many reviews and that they've got their government ID. And I mean, I have a really high setting on mine. To make sure that people are on the up and up, that they only have good reviews, but when you first start out, you might have that set lower. So you get more reviews right away when you get it set lower.

A lot of those people, they might not even have a review yet. Those are the people you go watch out for. If somebody has got seven or eight reviews and you can see the reviews that they've left and they've left all good reviews, chances are, if they left you a bad review, it's for a very good reason. But you'll be able to know because people who complain, they complain a lot.

The majority of them, if they don't complain a lot, if they've got one complaint out of, you know, 50 different stays, then there was a reason for that complaint. You can tell. But the majority of complainer's who are looking for a free ride, they complain a lot because they're always looking for a free ride.

That's just their mentality. That's just their money mindset. So. You want to make sure that you have a plan of action set for those people, if they show up at your place. Right. And one of the things you can have when you have that mentality and you have that plan of action is something that we call a release from service agreement.

A release from service agreement is basically something that they can sign that says, okay, we'll give you this what you want. You want this free night, or you can negotiate it down to a couple of nights, or let's say it was a $2,000. Say maybe you'll give them a couple of hundred dollars back, or maybe you had to settle for five wherever you landed.

You're going to give them this, but they have to sign the contract. What the release of service contract or the release of service agreement says is. They agree not to leave a bad review because if they leave a bad review, they don't get the money. So they don't have to leave a good review. You're not going to force them to lie if they didn't have a good time or whatever, but you're going to say yet, you want this.

Here's what you have to sign. And most people aren't happy, but if they're those kinds of people and they want that money. Oh, yeah. They'll sign the release of service in order to get the money. Otherwise you can say, yeah, fine. We also record every conversation we have with somebody, even if it's a text message back and forth, we have everything.

So we can say, you know what? We've got all the threats that you've given us. We can just turn all that into Airbnb, because basically you can tell. But they'll usually sign the release of service, but have a plan of action because there's either going to be a reason or they're looking for a free ride. If they are, you need to know ahead of time.

How far are you willing to go? A lot of times we give a lot of stuff away just to save five star reviews. We really do. We give a lot of stuff away. Because reviews are extremely important. Just know in your head beforehand, have a discussion with your spouse and say, or your partners and say, how far are we willing to go?

When somebody does this, what are we willing to offer? If they arrived to the room and the room isn't clean and we send somebody over to clean it, what should we give them? How are we going to make up for this lack of service and have some things in mind beforehand, you have a bunch of scenarios that go, okay, what if they can't find this?

Or what if this doesn't happen, or whether, if this didn't happen, how far are we willing to go? And if you do, if you do that, you'll find yourself getting a lot less angry. Then when these situations pop up on you unexpected because when they pop up on you unexpected, like the very first time they happen.

It's pretty devastating, to be honest, the very first time you get a bad review, your heart kind of sinks because you do take it very personally, but then over time, when you learn to not take it personally, you feel a lot better about it. You're like, Ugh, the person probably had this or something happened.

And I don't know what it is. You realize that you shouldn't, but see having a plan of attack ahead of time saying, you know what. Someday, we're going to get a bad review. And when we do, how are we going to handle it? Just knowing this stuff honestly will make you feel a lot better. Just having a plan of action, even if you never have to take that plan.

It's kind of like the exits in a hotel. Very seldom. Do you have to know the nearest exit or on a plane? I don't, I've never had to jump out of the plane, but I always feel better that they showed me, you know, where the little lights were. I knew the exits where they were, I feel better. They feel better telling me and we can get on with a nice plane ride.

You know, it's going to be the same thing in this business. You want to just be able to get along. And that plan of attack is going to help you. It's just. How are you going to handle these threats that people make? How are you going to handle these situations when they come up? Cause they will come up. Um, the situations will come up.

The threats might not come up and I pray to God for you that you never have people threaten you, but I've had people threaten me and inside them laughing outside, I'm very calm and cool and collected and taking responsibility. Okay. Number six is some people are just miserable and unhappy people. And I know this sounds terrible, but forgive them and move on.

That's it. I mean, it's literally just forgiving them and moving on. It's the people you look at when Jesus was up on the cross and he looked down and he said, father, forgive them. They know not what they do. You want to be that person. You want to be a Christ-like person that just looks at them and goes.

Ugh, this person is just miserable and no matter what I say, no matter what I offer them, no matter what I do, they just, they left me this terrible review and they were just mean and honoree and there was nothing I could do. And so you need to just breathe in, breathe out no matter what you do, you can't make them happy.

Anyway, just let it go. Just forgive them and let it go. And forgiving someone is so. Kind it really is forgiving. Someone is probably the nicest thing you can do for them and just letting them go and just wishing them, whatever it is you want, man. I hope you get it in life. I hope whatever it is, that's bothering you right now.

I hope it rectifies itself, whatever it is that made you like this. I hope it gets better for you and just let them go on and just send them love, send them forgiveness, send them on their way and just let it go. Just let it go. Right. They're just going to be unhappy. And number seven is going to be to follow up privately.

If somebody leaves a bad review, for instance, we've had bad reviews for everything from broken air conditioners that took us too long to fix two parking spaces. To the rain we recently had, oh, this is very good. This will help you a lot. We recently had a really nice young lady who came and stayed at one of our properties and she couldn't get the heater to work it's winter now.

And she was accidentally putting on the heater and the swamp cooler because it happens to be in the desert and there are two different. Units, um, and controls for each of those. The heater has a thermostat and the thermostat is on the wall and the thermostat looks like most thermostats throughout the United States.

It's a box with numbers on the side and you can set it at a certain temperature and it'll usually have a heat on or heat off and you can adjust it. And it'll tell you what the temperature is right now, inside the house. Well, there's also. A silver plate on the same wall, um, you know, a couple of feet away and that says bent on and it's, it's on a silver plate with a black knob that goes, and you can set.

What's called a swamp cooler, a swamp cooler just takes the humidity from the air and it somehow uses water. To blow the hot air and blow something through it and it cools the air down and it's actually makes a very, quite comfortable, you know, inside of a property inside of a house or something it's before ACS in Phoenix and Tucson and all the desert areas, probably in New Mexico, we all use swamp coolers.

It was just, you know, just like an evap cooler, just the water goes through the air, blows through it and calls it off. So this young woman. Had the swamp cooler on at the same time that she had the heater on, she turned to both of them on, she had the vent blowing and she said low venge, you know, so that the air was blowing out.

So basically it was fighting each other. The swamp cooler was cooling off the air and blowing cold air in, and the heater was trying to blow warm air through the vents and they were fighting each other. And the swamp cooler was winning because it was nighttime and it was super easy. To blow cold in. So the swamp cooler was, was winning.

And when we fall term, we were trying very hard to explain it to her. Are you sure you have the heater on you don't have the swamp cooler on? And she said, no, I have the vent set on low. Well, when you say that the vent is set on low, the only vent is the swamp cooler. So we were trying to say, Look, those black knobs that's for the swamp cooler.

You don't want those on, you just want to deal with thermostat, but no matter how we communicated it to where she wasn't understanding it, she wasn't getting it. So we sent out our maintenance guy right away. And you know, this, the first time she called it was in the morning. And when the maintenance man got there, she had figured out and turned off the vent.

So now hot air was blowing through. So she sent him away. He didn't even walk in. She just said, no, no, it's blowing out hot air now I've got it. And she sent him away. Well, then later that night it was, uh, pretty late, like 10 o'clock at night or something. We got a text from her again, it's freezing him here.

I've got the vent on. That's just blowing out cold air. No, we're thinking no, not the vent. And my husband kept saying, I think she keeps turning on the vent and I said, I've explained it to her. She really she's got to understand. I said, I, I went through the whole thing with her and explained it very clearly.

And he said, no, honey, I think she's got it on, on the vent. So I text her back and I said, Are you sure that you're not turning on the swamp cooler, which is like an air conditioner, those black knobs should be off. The only thing that should be on is the thermostat. That's the only thing that should be on.

That's going to be where your heater is. And I got no reply, nothing. But, um, she was very angry and so I was like, okay. And rightfully so. I mean, she's freezing her butt off in the middle of the night and the desert, it gets cold out here. I mean, it's still only November, but it's, it's cold at night here. I don't know is probably 50 or it could been even dropped down to 40 or whatever.

I think she said it was like 60 in there or something, but come on, nobody wants to be cold. So I said, okay, there's extra blankets. Up in the closet, feel free to use those. If you need to, I will give you the combination for the linen, you know, the linen drawer that has more blankets, um, inside of it. And we'll get you those.

In the meantime, we were up at, uh, an event up in Phoenix. So we were like an hour and a half away and I said, but I will drive right down. We'll be there before midnight and we'll get it fixed for you. And she said, no, no, it's too late. It's too late. So when she was complaining that it was too late, I just said, okay, I'll I'll comp you I'm really sorry.

She said, I don't want somebody coming in at midnight and fixing this. I've got to get up at six and we just let it be a bet. And so she left very, very bad reviews. And in our reply to her bad review, I mean, she was, and like I said, rightfully so nobody wants to be cold. Nobody should have to have. An engineering degree to run a heater or an air conditioner.

And it can be quite confusing if you're not from here, it can be. And she's, you know, she's a girl on her own. Maybe, you know, come on first time she's out. It could have been a guy too. It doesn't matter. I'm not saying. Uh, you know, anything either way, but it shouldn't have been so difficult for her. I felt bad for her.

We should have tried to have made it easier. So we switched and we, you know, put some more labels on those to try to make it easier for everyone. So do you see how that bad review was actually a good thing for us? Because it let us know that Hey. Not everybody is privy to this information. Like nobody who else was raised in the Southwest, who else has access to this stuff?

I mean, this stuff is weird and, and new and obviously confusing and it shouldn't be that way. So it was a growing thing on our part. And we were very apologetic and we gave her her money back and we told her we're so sorry that you had to go through this. W it was, you know, needless. And, but we did explain that we, you know, it's something guy out there and that she had turned them away and that we were good, the ones who are going to be late rightfully so, you know, and then it was our responsibility to teach her how to use that and not vice versa, our responsibility.

Are bad and we took responsibility for it. And then she, anyways, she, she actually went and changed the, the rating that she gave us. So once we were apologetic, once we did, you know, say we were sorry, once we did take responsibility for it. And. I mean, we had, when we were on the phone with her and she was very kind and nice about that.

She was, uh, she was really kind and I felt really bad for her. I really did. But the thing was when you take responsibility, a lot of times then good things happen in return because she took that. I think she had left a two or three star review and she up the review. And so our five star rating came back on that, a full five star again.

So, you know, when you are kind and you are good and you are understanding and you do take responsibility a lot of times good things happen. So you want to make sure that you always do your best to understand people, to understand that you cannot possibly know the things that they're going through or what happened in their day or their month.

There, you know, there are terribly sad situations. You know, I've been in cars next to people and felt something weird and looked and someone would be crying. And all I could do was just in my head, I had just asked loving angels to wrap their arms around them and give them strength to help them get through whatever they're going through.

True. Because people go through some really pretty crappy things. And usually they're crappy to other people when something crappy has happened to them. And we don't know what crappy things have happened to them. We only know what we can do and it's our job to do it. It's our job to take that responsibility.

And it's our job to be grateful for the criticisms, because a lot of times it helps us to grow and be better. That's what I want you to do. So let me real quick, go through my seven steps again, but I also want to remind you to always respond to every review. And if it's not a perfect review, you should respond personally or at least be able to see it.

So you know why it's not a five star review so that you can fix it. You also want to make sure that your teaching and training your guests to leave five star reviews, right? You want to be will Smith leading that. Leaving those little clues along the way. And you never want to be surprised about a review.

You want to have been communicating with your guests all along so that nothing is a surprise and you want to ask them what you can do to make it better. Right? What do you want me to do that way? You're not a mind reader, unless you really are a mind reader and good for you, but our steps are number one.

Don't take it personally. And remember to get that book, the four agreements it's really good. I'll have a link on the podcast for you to the book itself. And you can just go to this episode and you'll be able to see the link to the book so you can get it. Number two, be kind because, I mean, that's all it is the in the world, the more kind you are, the more kind people you will attract, be kind, always be kind.

Number three, take full and complete responsibility for everything even of the rain in Florida. Okay. Take responsibility for everything. Even if it's not, you, you take responsibility for it because it's your business and you take full and complete responsibility for it. Okay. Number four, focus on the good.

There's always more good than there is bad. Number five know ahead of time, have a plan of action ahead of time for every single event, every single complaint, every single scenario that you can think of and how far you're willing to go to combat it. Right. So have that. And number six, just remember some people are miserable, some people are miserable people, and they're just going to be unhappy people.

And they're just going to leave bad reviews and there's nothing you could do. So what are you going to do? Forgive them and move on, forgive and move on. And the last thing is to follow up privately with them. Make sure even after all the reviews are left, you go back and forth and you say, look. So, sorry about this.

This happened, reiterate what they told you, make sure that they know that you heard them and you heard their complaint. We're sorry that it rained the whole time you were there. We're sorry that you couldn't find a parking space. We're sorry that the air conditioner broke. We're sorry, whatever it is that, you're sorry for, just make sure you, and we hear you, right?

You want to let them know that you hear them and then say, We did this and this to rectify it. Is there anything else we can do? Just make sure that they know that you hear them and make sure they, that they know that you care. Okay. Just passing that along. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode.

And every episode we hope you're liking and subscribing to us. And if you could leave us a review, we'd be so incredibly grateful. Remember that we've got a new episode that is dropping Monday. So stay tuned. And our summit is coming up in absolutely love all the speakers we've got lined up to help you cookie cutter your business, and that's coming up at the end of this month, you can get your free tickets by going to bnb-boss.com and right there on the front page, you'll see summit tickets, free summit tickets right there for you.

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