I’ve invited Nora Sheils to share her expertise on what to do when you get a bad review. Nora is the co-founder of Rock Paper Coin, the first software platform to bring together wedding planners, couples, and vendors into one system for managing and paying contracts and invoices. She is also the founder and lead wedding planner of award-winning firm Bridal Bliss.

Bad reviews have always been a blow to one’s self-esteem, but they are especially more glaring in the digital era. In days past, it would be easier to shrug off a shameful email or a criticism during a phone conversation. Nowadays, with the numerous review sites out there, a negative review isn’t just there to haunt you; it also sits there for other potential clients to read. Thus, the way you respond to bad reviews plays a big role in your ability to take control of the situation and maintain a positive reputation.

First, let’s be clear: everybody gets a bad review from time to time. It’s not a reason to question your life choices or panic about your client experience; consider bad reviews as a learning lesson that can help you improve your business practices and provide better service.

Here’s how you can handle negative reviews with grace and tact.

Responding to negative reviews

You may feel inclined to immediately respond with a laundry list of reasons they’re wrong and you’re right, but that is exactly what you shouldn’t do. Recognize that you’re fired up, put your phone down, step away from it, and take a deep breath. Once you’ve calmed down, take some time to draft a very brief, professional response.

Offer to discuss offline to make things right and remain positive. Moving the conversation to an email or phone conversation is the best thing you can do for the integrity of your reviews. Then, let it be on the site and handle things behind-the-scenes if possible. The impact of the negative review will pass — and so will your rage!

Addressing false reviews

Of course, sometimes bad reviews aren’t even a reflection of your work. There are ‘trolls’ out there who get a kick out of spreading false information and hurting people’s feelings. Don’t let them affect you! Most review sites allow you to dispute the review; it’s an annoying process, but it’s well worth getting a false review off your profile. Reviews do make a difference in couples’ decision-making process, so the last thing you need is a fake negative review.

Before moving onto more costly and lengthy legal actions, start with a dispute and hope

that the site will take it down. In the meantime, you can write up a short response that calls out the falsity of the review and clears the doubt of those reading.

Recovering from a bad review

Deleting an authentic bad review is in poor taste, even if you’ve worked things out offline. In fact, many review websites won’t let you delete a review without going through the dispute process. Regardless, you should be committed to transparency and part of that is letting your good and bad reviews remain as is.

So, how can you move past a bad review? Beef up your positive ones! When the positive feedback far outweighs the negativity on your feed, it will make any viewer second-guess the negative review(s). Reach out to past clients to ask them to write a recommendation and make it easy by providing direct links to each site! Most will be thrilled to help and it’s never a bad thing to earn more great testimonials.

A bad review isn’t the end of the world; if anything, it can present an opportunity for valuable discussion and an outside look at where you could use some improvements. Remain respectful as you handle negative feedback, then move forward and grow from it — it’s all we can do!