How should I respond to a bad Google review?

Reply within a day or two. Stay calm and keep it short: thank them, own anything that went wrong, and offer to fix it offline with a name and a number. Your reply is really for the next customer reading it, so write it for them.

Google's own advice is to be professional and polite, keep it short, use the reviewer's name, and be conversational rather than salesy. Don't share details about the job or the customer. Never offer a discount or anything else to change or remove a review; Google doesn't allow incentives. If a review is fake or breaks Google's rules, report it from your Business Profile instead of arguing in the reply.

A reply that works: "Hi Sam, thanks for telling us, and I'm sorry the stain came back. That's not the result we want either. Call me at the shop and we'll come back out and make it right. Dana, owner."

We help clients with their replies and with a steady flow of new reviews, so one bad review sits among many good ones.

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