When a customer leaves a negative review, assign an employee to check what happened and see the complaint through to a resolution. Thank the customer publicly for sharing their experience, state the next step, and offer a private channel for purchase details. Check the receipt or order, speak with employees, and explain what you found and how you can correct any confirmed error.
Do not publish the customer’s personal information, argue with their feelings, or call the review made up just because you cannot find the sale. If you see a specific violation of Google’s policies, report it: the platform decides whether to remove the review. After investigating, record the cause of the problem, who is responsible for making changes, and how you will check the result.
Who responds to the customer and checks the complaint
The store owner decides who monitors reviews, who can access sales records, and who can approve a resolution. In a small store, one person may handle all these tasks. If there are several employees, assign one person to manage complaints: they gather the facts, get the manager’s decision, and tell the customer the outcome.
Agree on practical targets the team can meet. For example, the administrator checks reviews at the start and end of each shift and, after the first contact, tells the customer when to expect the next update. This is an internal store procedure, not a response deadline set by law for an online review.
Do not promise to finish the investigation by a certain time if you depend on another shift or a delivery company. You can promise a follow-up: “We’ll write to you by 12:00 tomorrow, even if we’re still waiting to hear back from the delivery company.” Make that promise only if the employee responsible can keep it.
What to save and check before replying
Save the review link, its text, and the date. This helps you track the complaint even if the author edits the review. In your internal record, separate what the customer said from confirmed facts. For example: “The customer reported receiving the wrong size” and “The order lists size M; the photo of the item received shows size L.”
- Read the review and identify the specific problem: the product, contents, delivery, price, or interaction with an employee.
- Privately ask for the purchase date, store or order number, and receipt number or a copy of the receipt, if available. Use only the information you need to find the order.
- Compare the complaint with the sale: product name, SKU, quantity, price, and agreed terms.
- Check messages, shipping details, and the account from the employee who served the customer.
- Record what you confirmed, what information is missing, and who will obtain it.
Not finding a sale does not, on its own, prove that a review is fake. The customer may have given an inaccurate date, bought the product at another store in the chain, or written on behalf of the person who received the order. Ask for clarification and continue the search.
If the customer complains about rude service, the receipt can help establish the purchase time and shift. The receipt alone does not confirm what was said. Hear separately from the customer and the employee, and do not draw a conclusion from just one account.
How to write a public reply without arguing
Show that you understand the specific complaint and state the next step. Google recommends showing empathy, protecting the reviewer’s private information, and avoiding personal attacks. For complex situations, the platform advises continuing the conversation by phone or email. Google’s guidance on replying to reviews.
Do not include a phone number, delivery address, receipt copy, purchase history, or screenshot of private messages in your public reply. Provide a store contact where the customer can safely share details. Do not ask them to post documents in the comments.
Before the facts are checked, you can express regret that the customer had a bad experience. Acknowledge a specific error once it is confirmed. Then explain it briefly, without excuses or publicly blaming an employee.
Sample replies
Adapt these examples to the specific complaint. The contact details and timing of the next reply must fit how your store operates.
| Situation | Sample reply |
|---|---|
| The review does not include purchase details | “Thank you for letting us know. We’d like to find out what happened. Please email the store with the purchase date and receipt number, if you have it. We’ll check the sale and let you know what we find.” |
| The store confirmed a packing error | “We checked what happened: the wrong size was packed. We’re sorry for the mistake. We’ll contact you privately and agree on how to correct the order.” |
| An employee is still gathering information | “We’re checking the shipping details and waiting to hear back from the delivery company. We’ll write to you by 12:00 tomorrow and let you know what we found.” |
| The sale has not been found yet | “We haven’t been able to find the purchase based on the details provided so far. Please send us the store location and approximate date privately. We’ll continue checking.” |
| The error has been fixed | “We corrected the packing error and delivered the right product. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We’ve added a size check before packing.” |
Use the last example only after the resolution has actually been carried out and the process has changed. Do not say the issue is closed while an employee has only passed it on to a colleague.
How to agree on a resolution with the customer
After checking the facts, the employee responsible explains three things to the customer: what was confirmed, what the store proposes to do, and when the store will report that it is done. For example, if the team mistakenly sent instructions for a different model, the employee sends the correct document and asks whether the customer was able to use it.
For a packing error, the manager approves a specific way to fix it, and the employee records the agreement: which product is needed, who will arrange delivery, and how the customer will receive confirmation. Avoid vague promises like “we’ll sort everything out” if you have not decided what to do.
Do not make the resolution conditional on removing the review. Google prohibits incentives for changing or removing a rating, including money, discounts, or free products. Do not offer a discount for five stars or a gift for deleting a comment. Google’s policy on fake engagement.
After carrying out the agreement, ask the customer to confirm they got the result they needed. If they do not reply, record that in the log. Do not claim the customer is satisfied if they have not said so.
How to check items from a receipt in Torgsoft
If a customer privately sends a receipt barcode printed by Torgsoft, a sales assistant can look up the items using the “Returns” form. After the barcode is scanned in the “Barcode” field, the program opens the list of items on that receipt. This helps establish which items were recorded in the sale. The procedure is described in the Torgsoft instructions.
This method requires the barcode of a receipt printed by the program, and the user must have access to the relevant feature in the permissions settings. Check the purchase before performing any further operations. The list of items on the receipt confirms the sales record; check the conversation with the sales assistant or the condition of the delivered parcel separately.
Record the result in the store’s complaint log: sale found, items match, or more information needed. You can keep the log in a separate spreadsheet that the employees responsible can access. Do not include receipt details in a public reply.
What to do about a suspicious Google review
First identify the specific platform policy violation. Suspicion about the author, a low rating, or disagreement with criticism are not grounds to assume automatically that a review should be removed. Google removes reviews that violate its policies; it does not settle ordinary disputes between a customer and a store. How to report a review.
- Save the link, review text, and materials related to the suspected violation.
- Compare the content with Google’s policies. For example, check whether the review contains private information or whether there is evidence of no genuine experience with the business.
- Report the review through your business profile or the review management tool specified in Google’s instructions.
- Check the status of your report in that tool.
- If Google does not find the review eligible for removal and you disagree with the decision, submit the one-time appeal available through the platform.
Removal is not guaranteed. Describe the violation in your report and include relevant evidence. You can leave a calm public reply offering to clarify the circumstances privately. Do not call the author a bot or a competitor’s representative without evidence.
How to find the cause of recurring complaints
A complaint log helps you spot recurring problems. For each case, record the complaint category, confirmed cause, resolution, person responsible, date of the next action, and outcome. Zendesk recommends tracking recurring questions systematically and, after reviewing an incident, identifying its causes and follow-up actions. A store can do this in a regular spreadsheet. Guidance on tracking recurring problems, How to review the causes of an incident.
A record that says “customer is unhappy” does not explain what to change. A more useful record would be: “Two products have similar labels; the packer checked the model but missed the size.” The manager can move the products to separate shelves, add an SKU and size check, and assign someone to review the next orders.
Sample result check
Suppose a store shipped 400 orders in a month and confirmed 8 packing errors. The error rate is 8 ÷ 400 × 100% = 2%. After changing the checking procedure, the store shipped another 400 orders and confirmed 3 errors: 3 ÷ 400 × 100% = 0.75%.
In this example, the error rate fell by 1.25 percentage points: 2% − 0.75% = 1.25. The manager should also check whether the team recorded errors the same way in both periods. The comparison alone does not prove that a single change caused the result.
Once a week, the employee responsible reviews unresolved complaints, and the manager reviews recurring causes. For each change, set a way to check it: review a sample of packed orders, check price accuracy, or listen to a training conversation with an employee. This helps the store see whether the team is following the new procedure and whether the problem is recurring.
Sources
- Google Business Profile Help: guidance on replying to reviews and protecting private information.
- Google Business Profile Help: reporting a review, checking its status, and submitting a one-time appeal.
- Google Maps: policies on prohibited content and incentives for reviews.
- Zendesk: tracking recurring customer problems.
- Zendesk: analyzing incident causes and follow-up actions.
- Torgsoft: finding items by receipt barcode in the “Returns” form.
Go back to the previous step