How should you respond to a bad review?

The instinct is to answer the reviewer, and it produces the wrong document. The reviewer has formed their view and is unlikely to revise it in public. The people who will read the exchange are prospective customers deciding whether to contact you, and they are not assessing who was right — they are assessing what you are like to deal with when something goes wrong. Writing for that audience changes almost every choice in the reply.

Brevity is the first consequence and the hardest. A long reply reads as defensive regardless of how reasonable its content is, because length signals that the criticism landed. Two or three sentences that acknowledge the experience, offer to put it right, and give a direct route to do so is a stronger position than a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal, even when the rebuttal is entirely correct.

Correcting a factual error is legitimate and should be done once, plainly, without adjectives. If the work was completed on the agreed date, say so. If the quoted price included what is being disputed, say so. What does not work is litigating the whole account, because a reader cannot adjudicate a dispute between strangers and will simply notice which party sounds aggrieved. One fact, stated calmly, does more than five.

There is a boundary that is easy to cross in the heat of it and can be serious. Details about the customer, their circumstances, what they bought or what happened at their property may be confidential, and in some sectors disclosing them publicly is a regulatory matter rather than a matter of taste. In healthcare and professional services particularly, confirming that someone was a client at all can be a breach. The safe form acknowledges the concern without confirming any specifics and moves the conversation offline.

Moving it offline is the actual objective of the reply. A named route — a person, a direct line, an email — demonstrates to future readers that the business is reachable and willing, and gives the reviewer somewhere to go if they want resolution. Whether they take it matters less than that it was offered, because the offer is the part that is public.

Two things worth doing after the reply. If the complaint is valid, fix whatever caused it and, where appropriate, say so later in a way a reader can see. And if a pattern appears across several reviews, treat it as the most honest operational feedback available, because it comes from people with no incentive to be polite and nothing to sell you.