Facebook is a great platform for connecting with parents and gathering reviews for your child care center. It’s important to show families that you value their comments and reviews with a prompt and friendly response, whether the review is good or bad. Here are some tips on responding to both positive and negative reviews:
Positive Reviews
Positive reviews and experiences give you the perfect opportunity to engage further with a parent and inspire customer loyalty. Here are some steps to help you seize this opportunity:
- Acknowledge the parent by name. Greeting a parent by their name, rather than something generic, adds a personal touch to your reply that lets them know their input and encouragement matters.
- Show honest appreciation. Thank the parent for their kind words with a genuine response that’s personalized to their review’s context. This is a great way to reinforce the positive features of your center.
- Include your daycare’s name. To help your daycare appear in search results, include your center’s name naturally within your response.
- Provide additional value. If the opportunity presents itself, you can include any information about upcoming discounts, programs or events at your center that they may be interested in. Be careful that your response doesn’t read too sales-y when providing additional value to your customers.
Negative Reviews
Negative reviews can be discouraging, but they also provide constructive feedback to help your center and staff improve. You have the opportunity to make things right with a genuine public response. Here are some steps you should take to help you maintain a calm composure and address the negative review with genuine concern:
- Evaluate the parent’s concern internally. Before responding immediately with frustration, it’s best to assess the bad experience or negative feedback the parent described with your staff. Reacting impulsively to a negative review will only make the situation worse.
- Address the review non-confrontationally. Acknowledge the parent’s concerns or feedback specifically in your reply with a sincere apology. Show sympathy in your reply, and let them know that you have put thought into correcting the issue with your staff members. Thank them for providing honest feedback to help your center improve.
- Offer a solution. Once you’ve reassured the parent that the issue has been, or will be, resolved, you can offer them a discount or another appropriate incentive.
- Avoid including your center’s name. Prevent search engines from prioritizing your negative reviews by leaving your center’s name out of your reply.
- Move the conversation offline. If the customer continues the conversation with you, it might be in your best interest to move the conversation to direct messaging, email or a phone call.
