The rise of websites that empower consumers to write reviews of our businesses is causing many business owners anxiety, or even outright rage. Of course we love it when people say great things about our business, but what about when they say bad things? Do we really have a reason to fear?

Just how significant are bad reviews for the future of our businesses? How can we insure against them? And how can we control what’s said? Here are my practical views on some of the myths and realities of the feared bad review, and some tips on dealing with them.

First off, it’s important to realize that we live in an imperfect world, and despite what technologists believe you can’t “program out” imperfection no matter how hard you try. Indeed, even trying to do so often just introduces other imperfections. I say this because you must realize that, if you’re in business today, there will be those that are saying bad things about your company, and I don’t believe it’s up to technologists to vet or censor what those people say.

Though as you’ll see, I do believe we have a duty of care to be able to deal with problems if they arise. I don’t care how virtuous you think you are, there will be those that misunderstand your motives, have had poor luck with your products or services or, for some other reason outside of your control and despite your best efforts to the contrary, have reasons to speak ill of your business.

It’s tempting to think you can control what’s said, but you really have little hope of doing that in most cases—though there are some exceptions I’ll cover later. The reasons why you can’t directly control what’s said are manifold: people are entitled to say what they think, and any attempts to gag critics will likely backfire on you when they make your attempts to gag them public too. Also, consider that the web is a pretty big place, and to try to police it for all occurrences of bad PR for your business with the view to erasing it or stifling the originators will likely take up more time than you have available.

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