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I don’t know if you have been following the recent string of articles over on eWedNewz concerning reviews on wedding websites. If not you can catch them here, here and here.
What started as a story regarding the sale by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia selling their interest in Wedding Wire grew to be an indictment of Wedding Wire and it’s review program. Whether you like Wedding Wire and it’s review program or not isn’t really important to my point. They are only one of many review programs out there and I happen to think Wedding Wire does a pretty reasonable job.
Here is the thing, you are not going to please everyone.
Yes that is what we all strive for, but it isn’t going to happen. So on that rare occasion when someone is upset enough to take finger to keyboard and put it out there, how you react is of vital importance.
The first thing you want to do is step away from the keyboard. DO NOT post a response in the heat of the moment. Your feelings are hurt and you are probably angry. Give it a day or two to filter.
Then post one or two reasonable sentences. Something along the line of
“I am sorry that we did not meet your expectations. We are actively reaching out to you via private channels to help resolve these differences.”
Of course you will need to reach out to them, but the point of the post was to let anyone reading the bad review know that you stand behind your work.
What you don’t want to do is post some long, rambling explanation or string of excuses. That is just going to start a very public pissing contest and that is the last thing you want.
Be sure to contact the hosting website to have the review verified or moderated. Sometimes this works. Sometimes.
What if you have no idea who this bride is?
Yep it happens. What if a competitor that is sneaky, malevolent and underhanded lies and posts a bad review on your page?
First you will contact the hosting website to have it verified. That can take forever and they may not even take your side. In the meantime, you need to respond to the review.
“I am not finding any reference to such an incident in my records. Would the poster please poivide her wedding date and location so that I may attempt to resolve this issue.”
Now you have publicly called them out and the ball is in their court. If they continue without providing the information they look like fools. You have also done a lot to CYA.
The main thing you want to keep in mind is that today’s bride is savvy enough not to base her opinion on just one bad review in a long list of stellar ones. In fact in some ways, it makes the other ones look more real. If every single review is Amazing!! Stellar!!! Way beyond expectations!!!!! they start to look a little fake. You know, like those late night infomercials.
Come on now, you do that yourself when you read reviews.
If worse comes to worse and you just can’t take it or find a way to resolve it; contact the website and have yourself removed entirely from the site.
Since this whole bruhaha started with a Celebrity planner’s bad review on Wedding Wire, I reached out to Sonny Ganguly, CMO at WW to be sure you could have 
your business removed. Here is his response:
In regards to your question, a wedding professional can inactivate their WeddingWire account by sending a request to our Support team at support@weddingwire.com. Our team will then inactivate the wedding pro’s account and remove personal information that they entered from the Storefront.
Ok, so that was kind of vague and didn’t really answer my question; so I followed up with this:
I need just one point of clarification please.Our team will then inactivate the wedding pro’s account and remove personal information that they entered from the Storefront.
Would you remove ALL information regarding said wedding pro? All traces of them, including reviews or would you leave a basic listing?
As I was writing this I saw this come through my Twitter stream
@idillionaire: If you’re not making enemies, you’re not doing well enough.
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