Yelp has been a breakthrough in reviewing businesses online. Never before could you look up restaurants or dentists in your home town and see how others had experience with them.

There are some ups and downs that come with this responsibility of reviews, especially on the business owner’s end. Yelp is set up so that anyone can sign up for a yelp account and review different businesses. On the business end, a business can either create an account and encourage clients/customers to write reviews – or – a business can claim it’s account if Yelpers (yelp users) have already start reviewing on their own.

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Here’s when things get tricky. Let’s say you own a restaurant and you have an account on Yelp and over the past few months, you’ve gotten some reviews. Most of them are 3 and 4 stars, but you also got some one or two 2 star reviews. At first, you might feel defensive and reactive about how the customer reviewed your establishment and want to react. I’ve read business owner’s reaction to low ratings and it can go either way.

Some business owner choose to use this opportunity as a frustration outlet and lash out at the customer, blaming them and accusing them of behaving badly, ordering the wrong food, having too high of expectations and overall, being defensive. This defeats the whole point of a site like Yelp. On the flip side, I’ve seen some business owners react openly to negative reviews, responding to the customer and asking them to give them feedback to improve the experience. It simply could have been a bad day or night for the business or the staff and it came through to the customer. That happens, but I think it’s so important for the business owner to see how they can be a part of this communication process and turn the corner. Often times,  once the reviewer has communicated with the business owner, they will update their review.

The message is simply – don’t lose out on gaining a customer for life. Bad reviews happen but business owners have the power to turn them around. Your customers are huge part of the new wave of advertising, there’s nothing more powerful than hearing a recommendation from a friend to a friend. It’s magical and it can spread like wildfire.