A particular class of business owners are convinced that aggressively responding to their negative online reviews will make them look good. I'm here to tell them that screaming and hollering at bad reviews makes said reviews look much more valid. I had a nefarious therapist as a teenager, and out of curiosity, I recently checked her Google Reviews. Y'all…it is bad news. She has a 2.5 out of 5-star rating, and all of her positive reviews appear to come from her colleagues. She responds to every bad review, accusing them of lying in a very lawyer-approved paragraph. If she wanted to turn the tide on her reviews, she could just make a fake Google account every month and give herself a positive review, but she's clearly not smart enough to think ahead like that. Another professional, this time a CEO, who couldn't take the heat recently went viral for responding to a negative Glassdoor review with accusations of lying, inadvertently proving the reviewer's point.
